Right hand side towards us, left away from us. #Right-lateral, or #dextral as we call this. And some extension (opening cracks). #structural #geology #Iceland

Speaking of #dextral and #sinistral #snail shells, they often occur via co- #evolution with #predation:

“Asian snail-eating #snakes (Pareas) have more teeth on the right mandible and specialize in predation on the clockwise-coiled majority in shelled snails by soft-body extraction. Snails have countered the snakes’ dextral-predation by recurrent coil reversal, which generates diverse counterclockwise-coiled prey where Pareas snakes live.”

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4820687/#!po=26.9231

A snail-eating snake recognizes prey handedness

Specialized predator-prey interactions can be a driving force for their coevolution. Southeast Asian snail-eating snakes (Pareas) have more teeth on the right mandible and specialize in predation on the clockwise-coiled (dextral) majority in shelled snails ...

PubMed Central (PMC)
The vast majority of #gastropod species has #dextral (right-handed) shell. #Sinistral individuals are extremely rare in snails. Here is a very nice citizen science project investigating the developmental origin of this #chirality. #science biology #ontogeny #snail #shell #citizenscience
📄 Davison et al. (2020) Internet ‘shellebrity’’ reflects on origin of rare mirror-image snails.’ Biology Letters 16:20200110 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0110