Sea snail is a common name for snails that normally live in saltwater, in other words marine gastropods. The taxonomic class Gastropoda also includes snails that live in other habitats, such as land snails and freshwater snails. Many species of sea snails are edible and exploited as food sources by humans.

Sea snails are marine gastropods with shells. Those marine gastropods with no shells, or only internal shells, are variously known by other common names, including sea slug, sea hare, nudibranch, etc. The diversity within sea snails is enormous. Many very different clades of gastropods are either dominated by, or consist exclusively of, sea snails. Because of this great variability, generalization about the feeding, reproduction, habitat, or other traits of sea snails is not possible. Instead, individual clades, families, genera, or species must be assessed.

Shells

The shells of most species of sea snails are spirally coiled. Some, though, have conical shells, and these are often referred to by the common name of limpets. In one unusual family (Juliidae), the shell of the snail has become two hinged plates closely resembling those of a bivalve; this family is sometimes called the "bivalved gastropods".

Snail is a common name that is applied most often to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs.

However, the common name "snail" is also applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have a coiled shell that is large enough for the animal to retract completely into. When the word "snail" is used in this most general sense, it includes not just land snails but also thousands of species of sea snails and freshwater snails. Occasionally a few other molluscs that are not actually gastropods, such as the Monoplacophora, which superficially resemble small limpets, may also informally be referred to as "snails".

Snail-like animals that naturally lack a shell, or have only an internal shell, are mostly called slugs, and land snails that have only a very small shell (that they cannot retract into) are often called semi-slugs.

Overview

Snails that respire using a lung belong to the group Pulmonata, while those with gills form a polyphyletic group; in other words, snails with gills form a number of taxonomic groups that are not necessarily more closely related to each other than they are related to some other groups. Both snails that have lungs and snails that have gills have diversified so widely over geological time that a few species with gills can be found on land and numerous species with lungs can be found in freshwater. Even a few marine species have lungs.

Bet on Black, occasionally referred to as "Snail Race", is an advertising campaign run in 2000 by Diageo to promote Guinness-brand stout in the United Kingdom. The piece, directed by Frank Budgen, follows a snail race taking place in a town of Latin American appearance. It is the third piece of the Good things come to those who wait campaign launched by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO in 1996, following on from Swimblack (1998) and Surfer (1999). The music in the advertisement is "Barbarabateri" by Beny More with Pérez Prado and his orchestra. Prado's music has also been in used in previous Guinness advertisements such as the successful Anticipation and Swimblack.

Whilst the previous advertisement in the campaign, Surfer, was a success, Bet on Black saw a return to the style of the campaign's inaugural advertisement, Swimblack, featuring a championed sports race and music by Pérez Prado. Conversely, the following advertisement in the campaign, Dreamer, was a return to Surfer's black and white filmography. The four advertisements formed the first part of the campaign which was put on hold for several years afterwards.

Snail (Chinese: 蜗牛; pinyin: Wōniú), or Suzhou Snail Digital Technology Co Ltd, is a video game company and a Virtual Network Operator headquartered in Suzhou, China, which has branches Snail Games and Snail Mobile. Its division, Snail USA, is responsible for bringing Snail Games products to audiences in North America and South America. With a focus on free-to-play online games, Snail Games acts as a developer and publisher of original IP across multiple genres and distribution channels, including massively multiplayer online (MMOs), real-time strategy (RTS), and casual games. Its global registered user base has reached over 70 million accounts, largely driven by its independent games portal Woniu.com. The U.S. operation anticipates the launch of its portal for Western audiences in Q2 2011, PlaySnail.com, to further drive its efforts abroad.

History

Snail was founded by Shi Hai in Suzhou, China, and became established as Suzhou Electronic Co., Ltd. in October 2000. The company is one of the first online game developers in China. With over 1,500 employees, Snail has a global presence, with offices in China (Suzhou and Shanghai), Taiwan, Russia and the US, and has localized its games into more than 20 languages.

A sea is a large body of salt water that is surrounded in whole or in part by land. More broadly, "the sea" is the interconnected system of Earth's salty, oceanic waters—considered as one global ocean or as several principal oceanic divisions. The sea moderates Earth's climate and has important roles in the water cycle, carbon cycle, and nitrogen cycle. Although the sea has been travelled and explored since prehistory, the modern scientific study of the sea—oceanography—dates broadly to the British Challenger expedition of the 1870s. The sea is conventionally divided into up to five large oceanic sections—including the IHO's four named oceans (the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Arctic) and the Southern Ocean; smaller, second-order sections, such as the Mediterranean, are known as seas.

Owing to the present state of continental drift, the Northern Hemisphere is now fairly equally divided between land and sea (a ratio of about 2:3) but the South is overwhelmingly oceanic (1:4.7).Salinity in the open ocean is generally in a narrow band around 3.5% by mass, although this can vary in more landlocked waters, near the mouths of large rivers, or at great depths. About 85% of the solids in the open sea are sodium chloride. Deep-sea currents are produced by differences in salinity and temperature. Surface currents are formed by the friction of waves produced by the wind and by tides, the changes in local sea level produced by the gravity of the Moon and Sun. The direction of all of these is governed by surface and submarine land masses and by the rotation of the Earth (the Coriolis effect).

The Sea or the Water is an area of the sky in which many water-related, and few land-related, constellations occur. This may be because the Sun passed through this part of the sky during the rainy season.

Most of these constellations are named by Ptolemy:

Sometimes included are the ship Argo and Crater the Water Cup.

Some water-themed constellations are newer, so are not in this region. They include Hydrus, the lesser water snake; Volans, the flying fish; and Dorado, the swordfish.

See also

References

Sea EP is the second EP from Doves. It was self-released on the band's Casino Records label on 24 May 1999 on limited CD and 10" vinyl. The band dedicated the EP to Rob Gretton, who helped fund Doves' early releases as well as when the band played as Sub Sub. Rob died of a heart attack only a few days before the EP was released. In the music video for "Sea Song," the opening title card reads "For Rob."

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Jez Williams, Jimi Goodwin, and Andy Williams. 

Notes