Monday, July 2, 2012

Assasi* (for Assassin, Assassination, etc.)

Care to guess how the assassin snail got its name?  Clea helena, a freshwater snail with origins in Southeast Asia, is a member of the Buccinidae, or whelk, family.  Whilst you might enjoy looking at these pretty creatures in your aquarium, their chief virtue is that they eat other snails–the undesirable kinds that can quickly overrun a tank if accidentally introduced with new plants or fish.

You can read more about assassins at the Conscientious Aquarist site.  Or if you prefer to move in for the typo kill, hunt down and eradicate instances of Assasi* in your catalog.  It’s a high probablilty error on the Ballard list with 80 English-language specimens in OhioLINK.

(Clea helena, from Wikimedia Commons)

Deb Kulczak

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