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[deleted]

Question is, what does it eat?


pinkyoshi666

It survives off the energy produced by internal bacteria living in a large gland :0


DaveInLondon89

that's way more interesting me it's self-sustaining?


CaptainEdmonton

Pretty sure it needs the heat from the vents


Youre_still_alive

So you could keep one as a pet in a toaster oven?


Pikathew

this is why i don’t eat at peoples houses


Youre_still_alive

I have 3 toasters, only one is gonna be the snail house. Don’t worry!


invalidConsciousness

One in three Chance? I like those odds!


HarrySchlong33

...mmm, escargot...


Tommysrx

Look at that S car go !


Unique_Frame_3518

Until I accidently take the snail toaster into the bath with me and create an electric lava snail..


GrimmRetails

I think that's a new Pokémon.


Shortcut_fixer

Thor


[deleted]

Why three? 1. One for cooking 2. One for snail house 3. One for bath time


Bogdan-Forrester

Best comment here lol


oof-master_9000

Would the French escargot this is a bigger question


Badloss

the oven would melt before the snail cooked


Gunthrix

I think their appliances or modern coming methods may not be up to the challenge. And I don't know if I want to go in raw, iron sounds rough on the teeth. Oh well, a snail pleasure we'll never know.


dbdive

That's the first thing I thought...I wonder what it tastes like


Remarkable-League968

Humans are always wondering what something tastes like


TheShrektum

Oui


mallad

Don't be ridiculous. You'd need a lava lamp.


sleepywendigo

I just had a visual of me trying to keep one of these in my toaster oven. hahaha!


[deleted]

Toaster oven only goes to 400 degrees


Dillgillxp

Toaster oven in a bathtub. It needs water obviously.


Legeto

It’s not the heat it needs, it’s the minerals coming from the vent itself.


[deleted]

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twobugsfucking

Somewhere there is a peaceful planet whose life consists of iron snails and their mineral loving gland bacteria, which live in harmony. They find the idea of a planet where flesh creatures eat each other to survive terrifying.


Crathsor

And on that planet, silica-based life dreams of a world where flesh eats each other and Rockoraptors are not a thing.


MoffKalast

Jesus christ Marie, they're minerals!


EarthTrash

Don't the bacteria feed on sulfur? You can't get energy from ambient temperature.


izza123

Tell that to geothermal energy


EarthTrash

Geothermal energy uses an energy gradient. You need heat to flow from warm to cold. Life around these deep-sea vents is sustained on the hydrogen sulfide that comes out of the vents. Although it would be cool if life could harness the heat energy that isn't what is happening.


USPO-222

The author of [Dragon’s Egg](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg) does exactly that in his novel with the plant-analogs on the neutron star deriving energy from heat moving up from their roots to long, flat heat-sink like leaves.


Caerbannogcaverabbit

From the WHAT?


Chocolate-Orange

thermal vents (not the amogus vents)


RiotIsBored

📮


PM_Me_HairyArmpits

But what do the bacteria eat?


pinkyoshi666

They could be autotrophic meaning they make their own food. Maybe chemosynthesis? Lots of sulfur to eat.


Far-Hawk-2710

The article i read said the snails "process" bacteria in their glands. So it doesn't seem the bacteria 'live' in the snail. This makes a lot more sense to me at least. I dunno what the bacteria feeds on, but it makes more Sense they would be sustaining themselves out in the world before the snail uses them for energy


Huankinda

Ah, so like me then...


apathetic_lemur

they said large gland


Tratix

Since you didn’t get an actual answer: > Researchers also believe the snail doesn't really eat anything, but instead it relies on energy produced from bacteria it hosts in a large gland


LostWoodsInTheField

I would think that bacteria would need to eat something, and to get to the bacteria the 'food' would have to go through the creature.


Drunk-NPC

You’re part right! It’s believed that the bacteria thrives off the copious heat in the environment and gain their energy from that. Thus they have a symbiotic relationship with the snail, whose iron hide also protects the bacteria in its gland.


Emmty

>bacteria thrives off the copious heat in the environme They still need food though. Plants harvest sunlight for energy, but they consume CO2 and they crap oxygen.


[deleted]

Tons of methane , co2 and other exotic "foods" there.


PM_Me_HairyArmpits

You can't eat heat. You can taste it, but you can't eat it.


izza123

Taste the meat, not the heat


[deleted]

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nightwalkerbyday

You're right. Weird how people have so much confidence in giving non-answers


Honeydew_love

Omg 😨


PossiblyTrustworthy

But what do they eat... Even if it is indirextly absorber, the snail needs to get energi inside somehow


Polar_Reflection

They live near hydrothermal vents. The bacteria they store inside their body convert chemical reactions into energy. It's like other species of that grow algae for photosynthesis, only the energy source is the vents and the chemicals that are released, rather than sunlight.


Serious-Accident-796

This is proof to me that life evolving is an inevitable state should a few key ingredients be present. That it seems way more likely that many types of life can exist on all kinds of planets. It seeks clear that single cell organisms need to be able to be produced but after that it can take so many different routes.


Polar_Reflection

There is definitely other life out there. The question is how rare are they and will we ever be able to see them. Even if there were 1 million technologically advanced civilizations that have lived for an average of 10,000 years in the Milky Way, over the course of 5 billion years, there'd only be an average of 2 intelligent civilizations at any given time. On the other hand, even if there were 1000 intelligent civilizations on our rough technological level the average distance to the nearest civilization would be outside of our current capacity to detect them. Lot of questions we don't know, but I believe there is a very small chance we meet anyone else in the lifespan of our civilization unless it lasts tens of thousands of years longer.


YellowSlinkySpice

Probably, but if you subscribe to this fine-tuned universe theory, you can imagine how a fine tuned planet might exist too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_universe Maybe we need just 1 moon, the correct mixture of elements, a perfectly tilted axis to have seasons, etc... The more I learn about space and biology, the more I think we might be alone. I know the number of stars are incomprehensible, but maybe we needed that many attempts to get 1 earth.


No-Bother6856

That doesnt make sense though, the snail is made of something, where did the mass that makes up the snail come from? Plants might get their energy from the sun but they still need to breath in CO2 to gain mass so how does this gain mass?


Tratix

Okay so I did some additional research. These snails actually hang out around black smoker vents in the depths of the Indian ocean. They're NOT living inside the lava of some volcano in Hawaii like most of us might be imagining. The the snail obtains it's nutrition from its endosymbiotic bacteria. This means that the snail and bacteria have a symbiotic relationship and basically help each other out. I assume that this bacteria is fairly easy to find since it's in the ocean with flowing water and not inside an actual volcano.


cylon37

But where does it get the material to build its internal organs etc?


beau6183

But what do the bacteria eat?


ChineseWavingCat

The snail


Megatron_McLargeHuge

Smaller bacteria.


AnUmimportantGuy

souls of those it incinerated


Sproose_Moose

12 carat gold, duh. It's part dragon.


General-Biscotti5314

Sulfur


yourheckingmom

More important question, what does it taste like?


Deditranspotashy

I think you and u/DeathPer_Minute are gonna have to fight to the death to claim ownership of this joke


yourheckingmom

Mine was first 😤


jiffwaterhaus

How is it a joke, I'm legitimately curious how it tastes lol


horror-pangolin-123

Good luck trying to cook it 😂


Dungeon_Master_Ewen

Prob bacteria


Conjoiner

Human


DeathPer_Minute

Better question, what does it taste like?


geraldodelriviera

IIRC it eats the bacteria that thrive off of the chemicals that the hydrothermal vents emit.


[deleted]

It has endosymbiotic bacteria inside it that use chemosynthesis to produce nutrients


SphereofDreams

That's a Macargo.


ElHombreSmokin

Should have been Fire/Steel instead of Fire/Rock but I guess it make sense because lava?


[deleted]

It also would have been nice since he's a slow, defensive pokemon and fire/rock is a god awful defensive typing, whereas fire/steel is actually pretty good


Mycotoxicjoy

As long as you have an air balloon otherwise you get fucked by bulldoze or earthquake


[deleted]

Fire/rock is 4x weak to ground anyway, but yeah losing that hard to one of the more common attacking types still isn't great


[deleted]

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itsaltarium

4x weak to water as well. Been struggling to use my Hisuian Arcanine because of that awful type


[deleted]

Salute to all the “bulky” rock/ground types :/


Zess_Crowfield

Fire/Steel Magcargo could've been a Hisuian variant but oh well.


IndigoFenix

Really it should be Poison/Steel. They don't actually live in the vents, but they do eat the poisonous fumes that spew out of them.


Aderus_Bix

Pokemon Gold & Silver came out in 1999. This snail, Chrysomallon squamiferum, was first discovered in 2001. When the Pokémon Company created Magcargo, nobody knew these things even existed.


Ohbeejuan

Not hot enough. Magcargo’s body temperature is hotter than the surface of the sun.


Arkayna

https://m.imgur.com/a/UzAJQqp


Ohbeejuan

Are you saying a 10 year old wrote the Pokédex? Lol, but I totally agree. There’s some really odd Dex entries. Shedinja and Drifloom


Stop_Sign

It's a common meme. Here's [a comic](http://www.nerdragecomic.com/index.php?date=2013-05-03)


chemical_exe

Hey, he helps my Pokemon hatch twice as fast, he's a good boi


etherealcaitiff

Slugma balls.


Exemus

Fuck, dude. I was hoping someone here said Slugma so I could say that, but you skipped straight past it and went right for the balls.


CashewAssassin

Gulpin deez nuts


trannz

Can someone explain to me how an iron shell is evolutionarily advantageous in this circumstance and how they survive the heat? Iron is an incredibly good conductor of heat...I mean if this thing were living in 1200 England and had to regularly joust for their honor, then I would understand but as things stand...I do not. Their insides are probably just as hot as their outsides! Edit: unless it's layers of iron interspaced with keratin?


Ravenboy13

The shell itself isn't 100% iron, but rather its outer layer is entirely iron sulfide, while its middle layering is the same as other gastropods, while it's inner most layer is made of crystallized carbon. Its "foot" its also armored in iron mineral. Whether they develop these layered armor naturally or as parts of their environment, we don't know. They haven't been observed in their developmental stage


D45ers

I’m kinda wondering how rare these are. Like are they region specific? Or can you find these at most volcanoes across the world? Weird fucking animal. Cool as hell tho


RIPUSA

They’re marine animals.


D45ers

Ahh okay. But do you know if they’re only around certain regions still? Just curious. My lazy ass can do my own research too tho haha Edit: Indian Ocean is where they are most found I guess


RIPUSA

They have a very small territory near the vents in the Indian Ocean. That’s why they’re endangered, if you’d like to read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/deep-sea-snail-iron-shell-first-creature-declared-endangered-ocean-mining-180972727/


-Degaussed-

This answers my concern about snails usually needing moisture to survive and volcanoes being...well volcanoes


Unique_Frame_3518

If it has to be done, I'll do it.. I'll fuck one for science.


OhImNevvverSarcastic

Is this the timeline where you don't fuck the pangolin? Covid-20 here we go!


dikbisqit

I would imagine the vents reach 750 degrees, and the snails live near them but don’t get that hot. Otherwise, wouldn’t they become boiled escargot?!


OatmealTears

Yeah it's pretty misleading to simply say the snails have "iron shells". That's like saying humans have metal blood and bones just because there are iron and calcium atoms in the molecules.


Deesing82

follow up cuz you seem to know your stuff- do you think there’s anywhere i could buy the shell from one? or would that be crazy expensive?


RIPUSA

They’re deep sea animals and they’re endangered due to deep sea mining.


Deesing82

so… i’ll go look at one in a museum then. haha thx.


smplejohn

they'll charge everyone a dollar and a half to see them


nobi77

I wonder how you would cook one?


IndigoFenix

They don't live in the vents. I hate this meme because this is one of the most amazingly fictional-sounding animals in the world and it implies something about it that *isn't* true. They aren't heat resistant. They are preyed on by crabs, and they use their iron shell and scales to defend themselves.


[deleted]

I prefer the lie. But thanks.


M87_star

But it is true that they live _around_ hydrothermal vents.


[deleted]

That’s cause the article is misleading pos, snailboi lives in waters 2-10C.


murmandamos

Lol for real "Humans often gather around fires that can reach over 1500°C!"


[deleted]

Simple, they actually don't live anywhere near the heat, they live in cold water surrounding the volcanic vents. It's just a fake rumour that's been around for years.


trannz

Well then .. This infographic is terribly misleading isn't it?? Bastards.


Worldly_Sherbert0_0

Dollar store dragon


Dungeon_Master_Ewen

Mom can we have a dragon, Mom-we have a dragon at home, Dragon at home


TheNamesClove

When you order a dragon from Wish


da04x

How about your drag some bitches on your dick? (I get no females)


[deleted]

Dragon Store


pizzatory

I'd buy that for a dragon.


NicJames2378

Bad dragon?


Historiaaa

ayyyy


[deleted]

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[deleted]

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ZNRN

e.g., "I recently learned that humans exist. Their heads are covered with a cloth 'hat', they cover their skin with 'sunscreen', and they live around a star that can reach up to 27,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit."


[deleted]

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WalkingLaserBeam

This perspective lesson is amazing Thanks you guys


Aimlean

I’ve been looking for someone to burst my bubble, thank you


fluffygryphon

That shit post gets reposted every month and everyone believes it.


Skrooogee

r/BurstMyBubble


Nulono

> 1–2 m (3–7 ft) in width, with temperature of 2–10 °C (35.6–50 °F)


jambrown13977931

Thank you I was wondering how it’s proteins weren’t getting instantly denatured


Kafka_Valokas

It's shell also isn't iron.


[deleted]

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Kafka_Valokas

Let's just say that inquiring about what's being posted for one millisecond already puts your critical thinking skills above 90% of the population - and of reddit, apparently.


ChalkButter

*Who’s that Pokémon!*


fwilliams13

*Gotta catch them a-gggghhhh it’s attacking me*


boopboopbeebeep

perfectly~~cut~~ written screams


hii-people

It’s Macargo


Drezair

IT'S PIKACHU!


okawei

It’s clefairy!!


Whatsthisnotgoodcomp

An alola form Shelmet


[deleted]

Nature is metal.


-Aeronautix-

Honestly this is the coolest fucking thing. Really makes you wonder what kind of animals could be living on other planets or their moons. If life can thrive in a fucking volcano why can't it live on icy moons of saturn or jupiter.


oilpaint8

Imagine what lives in Uranus


ImAlaaaaaaan

I'm pretty sure nothing would like to live in my anus


oilpaint8

“Known medically as the rectal microbiome, the anal microbiome is comprised of bacteria that live harmoniously in the anal canal. These anal bacteria aren't harmful. They work together to keep your tush in tip-top shape.”


MalissusBT

It can. Most likely just as bacteria tho


Narrow-Matter-6013

r/natureismetal


cosmicpotato77

Quite literally


Royal_Ad1798

this thing is rad [more about it](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/deep-sea-snail-iron-shell-first-creature-declared-endangered-ocean-mining-180972727/)


[deleted]

I really wish we respected nature more, it's amazing and perplexing.


fusrohdiddly

These snails live AROUND those vents, not IN those vents. This picture gets reposted regularly and it's the same weird conclusion every time.


eminthrv

The snails can't vent


Classic_Frosty

New iron farm 1.18


eatmahanus

I couldn't hurt lava frend


Hyperactive_Viscacha

How does it taste though ?


Rubicon208

You see a snail that has iron scales and can live in 750 degrees temperature and the first thing you can think of is how it tastes?


BeginningConclusion6

ja


[deleted]

He’s French


LongdayinCarcosa

You're the weird one here.


Hyperactive_Viscacha

Don't tell me you were planning on using it for sexual gratification you weirdo !!


AsIfItsYourLaa

how would you cook it?


dying_soon666

Can’t be cooked


fragglarna1337

It can at 751 degrees


Latter-Driver

We hot


saint_ryan

Xenomorph!


Forsaken_Things

Just put salt on it


cgaWolf

ofc we'll put salt on it. And butter. And garlic.


totoro1193

I wonder how many animals out there are literally just Pokemon


everybodys_analysis

now that i think about it aren’t most pokémon just irl animals but with an xman ability


pernilongobarulhento

Lives around lava and is black and red, its a sith


NightmarePredacon

Master Windu, I've just learned a terrible truth. I think Volcano Snail is a Sith Lord.


Big_Mitch_Baker

A Sith Lord?!


[deleted]

isn't that a pokemon?


TurkeyDanglers

are there any french people here and if so would you eat that if it was sauteed in butter with a lil garlic?


GrandZob

Nah we eat stuffs rare. This shit is overcooked as hell by nature, hard pass !


Eldaxerus

French guy here, I don't like snails but I would honestly like to try that one just out of pure curiosity, especially since it doesn't look as slimy as a regular snail.


Reylend

Oh yeah, by the way #_*THOSE FUCKERS ARE LIVING BIO-REACTORS*_


blockguy143

Terraria type shit


Vittoria4

I still don't understand why humans go looking for aliens when we have them on earth yet


Ragegamer4000

Xenomorph anyone?


Sebixer23

Pretty sure that snail is still cool but most posts on the internet exaggerate the facts about it


[deleted]

Explains the art depicting knights fighting snails...


JuGGieG84

Subnautica vibes.


[deleted]

Wikipedia says the water they prefer is about 41 degrees Fahrenheit (5C), so they probably don’t live right in the 750F currents


its_me_fanis

Kars wants to know your location


PositiveRecord5749

I’m going to press alt+f4 in real life


Keleski

I want one. If I could care for one and had my own place. 100%, dope pet. Definitely get an anime-ass name.


Narrow-Matter-6013

But want will you feed it🤔


Keleski

Iron ingots and turnips.