Meet the tiniest snail in the world

The world's tiniest snail was discovered in Malaysian Borneo, named the Acmella nana that measures just 0.7 millimeters wide. It has a white translucent shell and is so small researchers had to use a microscope to spot it in the wild.  

This tiny invertebrate is around one-tenth of a millimetre smaller than the previous record holder.

The newly identified snail has been named as Acmella Nana by the Malaysian and Dutch researchers. The species of the creature (nana) is derived from the Latin word nanus, meaning dwarf.

The researchers knew exactly where to hunt for unknown mollusks.

Snails tend to live on Borneo's limestone hills, likely because their shells are made of calcium carbonate, the main component of limestone, said study co-researcher Menno Schilthuizen, a professor of evolution at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Dr. Schilthuizen, and his fellow researchers have been studying snails in Malaysia for more than two decades.

It's unclear what Acmella nana eats because the researchers have never seen it alive in the wild. But the researchers have observed a related snail species feeding on bacteria and fungi that grow on wet limestone surfaces.

The puny little record holder lives in at least three places in Malaysian Borneo. Borneo, home to over 500 snails’ species, is shared by three countries- Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia.

During this study, scientists discovered a total of 48 new snail species including Acmella nana. The entire study has been published in the journal ZooKeys.