Tiny sea snails can survive a voyage through a duck's gizzard — where prey are typically crushed to death — only a little the worse for wear.
Gerhard Cadée at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research in Texel sifted through the faeces of shelducks, Tadorna tadorna, for shells of the snail Hydrobia ulvae (pictured). Snails that suffered only minor damage quickly repaired their gashes after Cadée placed them in a laboratory aquarium. The creatures developed scars on their shells that resembled marks left by certain predators that had tried and failed to eat them.
Between 2.8% and 41.8% of the H. ulvae shells collected at 11 sites along the Wadden Sea bore repair scars. Such wide variation may complicate efforts to relate the frequency of scars in fossilized shells to levels of predation, Cadée says.
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Jonah and the waterfowl. Nature 472, 262 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/472262a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/472262a
