Predatory snail fitted with tiny computer to reveal how one snail species evaded it

Researchers mounted the world’s tiniest computer on the shell of a predatory snail that wiped out nearly 50 species of snail on the South Pacific Society Islands in French Polynesia.

The team wanted to find out why one endemic species – the white-shelled Partula hyalina – survived after the invasive rosy wolf snail was introduced to the islands in the 1970s.

The mini computers revealed that the alien rosy wolf snail could not tolerate as much light as the white-shelled snail, which lives on the forest edge.