New Slime-Shooting Worm-Snail Discovered on Shipwreck

Scientists have discovered a new snail species that’s pretty special: It shoots slime, lives on shipwrecks, and could have major implications for coral reef restoration.

Known as the Vandy snail to its discoverers, it's named after the only place it's ever been found: The hull of the sunken USNS Vandenberg, a ship that was scuttled deliberately in 2009 to create an artificial coral reef off the Florida Keys.

But the snail is a long way from home. A new study reports that this recently discovered species, a type of worm-snail, is native to the Pacific Ocean.Read about this weird creature and what its presence on Florida's artificial reefs could mean at the National Geographic Weird & Wild news blog: New Slime-Shooting Snail Found on Shipwreck.