A series of videos showing dozens of snails devouring a giant jellyfish stranded on a beach in Port Elizabeth, in southern South Africa, were recorded by a renowned National Georgaphic photographer.
In the words of Keith Ladzinski, the author of the footage, ” the scene was a total feast for hundreds of crustaceans ” which he witnessed as he walked on the beach at sunrise.
The graphic material, recorded with the fast camera technique, has already received more than 175,000 views since it was published this Monday on Nat Geo Wild’s Instagram account.
At first glance, it seems that snails lack teeth, since their soft bodies do not reveal structures of this type. However, how do snails eat if they don’t have teeth? The answer is simple: they have an organ called the radula, which is similar to a jaw. Within the radula exist rows of tiny chitin teeth.
Once the snail has obtained its food, it carries it to the radula, where it scrapes it over and over again until it breaks up enough to continue the digestion process. The snail’s teeth suffer a lot of damage as time goes by, because of this, they are continually replaced by others.
