#oxychilus draparnaudi

[arcticarthropod]

Draparnaud's glass snail What a regal name!

[libutron]

Oxychilus draparnaudi | ©Dietrich Meyer   (Marly, Fribourg, Switzerland)

It is the Greater garlic snail or Dark-bodied Glass-snail, Oxychilus draparnaudi (Heterobranchia - Zonitidae/Oxychilidae). It measures 12 mm only but has this strikingly blue soft body. The blue color stems from the blood; the snails use Hemocyanin as an oxygen transport molecule, that contains Copper ions, not Iron like Hemoglobin does, giving it a blue tint. You can also see the pulmonar opening and the four feelers, two of them with eyes of the camera lucida type. 

This snail lives under rotten logs in humid places in many parts of Southern, Central and Western Europe.