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Sat 03 Mar 2003More headaches for the Vertigo specialists
ANOTHER LIFE: In a world just now convulsed by the big and the violent, the tiny snails called Vertigo seem dizzyingly insignificant. Their lives are spent in totally peaceful obscurity, down at the damp roots of grasses and moss, writes Michael Viney.
They graze on bacteria and microalgae, part of the vast but diminishing army of invertebrates that recycles vegetation into the soil. These snails creep along beneath shells rather smaller than a grain of rice and spun into vertical whorls, a giddy shape that prompts their scientific name.
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