some type of adult girl

blondebrainpower:

The Scaly-Foot Snail ingests the toxic magma-fumes of hydrothermal vents and grows a coat of organic iron plates

cult_of_zetas

While the snails do live at hydrothermal vents with lots of toxic minerals in the water around them, they don’t eat the minerals themselves. They are hosts for symbiotic bacteria that use those toxic minerals to grow, and the snails live off the energy and organic carbon produced by the bacteria.

It’s not entirely clear what the purpose of the scaly foot structures is, but it could be a part of the way that the bacteria detoxify the poisonous minerals. If bacteria that “eat” metals don’t come up with a way to keep their cells from becoming encased in the waste product of their metal metabolism, they die. So many metal-eating bacteria make fancy structures out of that metal waste, complexed with organic components. It’s a super cool way to live, but fairly difficult to study.

(via stripeysnail)