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Description
Over the course of its life, the konigsberg snail experiences one of the most dramatic changes in size in the animal kingdom. When first hatched, it is only a few centimetres long, and feeds continuously, sucking water into its mouth and through its gills, which also strain out plankton to be digested. Anything large enough to become stuck is rasped into detritus with its radula. Its shell begins as merely a soft plate, and it relies on its speed to evade predators, but many, many siblings will die in its place.

Its growing shell is chambered, like that of a nautilus, and contains waste air which enables the growing snail to remain neutrally buoyant, but soon becomes too cumbersome for the snail to manoeuvre as well as it did before. Its habits change accordingly, ducking inside at the sign of trouble rather than attempting to dart out of the way.

The rate of attrition drops sharply among snails of this age, but they do not reach maturity until they are about half a metre long. While it will continue to grow steadily until death, it will do so much less swiftly, due to the increasing energy diverted to maintaining its own health and fertility - and, more importantly, not as swiftly as its buoyant shell continues to grow, which drags them upwards. Konigsberg snails mate just above the surface of the water, where they aren't completely crippled by the square-cube law but are relatively safe from predators when they extend themselves fully from their shells, inject each other with sperm, and separate. The eggs are scattered to the currents over the next few days.

Being large floating objects that most predators can't eat any more, though, mature snails tend to begin to attract debris. Seaweed gets caught on the shell and absorbs its dissolved wastes. Coral and other sessile organisms attach themselves. Creatures which eat these things begin to follow it around as well. Ultimately, the snail can accumulate its own miniature ecosystem, where plankton flourishes for the snail to eat, in a strange and stunningly complex display of symbiosis. Sooner or later, though, the snail will die and its occupants will begin to leave as well.

A very few konigsberg snails, perhaps a dozen in the ocean at any given time, grow as large as the one depicted above. Much of the coral and seaweed that would be attached to a snail of this size has been ignored to provide a clear view.

Description
Over the course of its life, the konigsberg snail experiences one of the most dramatic changes in size in the animal kingdom. When first hatched, it is only a few centimetres long, and feeds continuously, sucking water into its mouth and through its gills, which also strain out plankton to be digested. Anything large enough to become stuck is rasped into detritus with its radula. Its shell begins as merely a soft plate, and it relies on its speed to evade predators, but many, many siblings will die in its place.

Its growing shell is chambered, like that of a nautilus, and contains waste air which enables the growing snail to remain neutrally buoyant, but soon becomes too cumbersome for the snail to manoeuvre as well as it did before. Its habits change accordingly, ducking inside at the sign of trouble rather than attempting to dart out of the way.

The rate of attrition drops sharply among snails of this age, but they do not reach maturity until they are about half a metre long. While it will continue to grow steadily until death, it will do so much less swiftly, due to the increasing energy diverted to maintaining its own health and fertility - and, more importantly, not as swiftly as its buoyant shell continues to grow, which drags them upwards. Konigsberg snails mate just above the surface of the water, where they aren't completely crippled by the square-cube law but are relatively safe from predators when they extend themselves fully from their shells, inject each other with sperm, and separate. The eggs are scattered to the currents over the next few days.

Being large floating objects that most predators can't eat any more, though, mature snails tend to begin to attract debris. Seaweed gets caught on the shell and absorbs its dissolved wastes. Coral and other sessile organisms attach themselves. Creatures which eat these things begin to follow it around as well. Ultimately, the snail can accumulate its own miniature ecosystem, where plankton flourishes for the snail to eat, in a strange and stunningly complex display of symbiosis. Sooner or later, though, the snail will die and its occupants will begin to leave as well.

A very few konigsberg snails, perhaps a dozen in the ocean at any given time, grow as large as the one depicted above. Much of the coral and seaweed that would be attached to a snail of this size has been ignored to provide a clear view.