The Beauty of the Sea Butterfly's "Flight"

Flight has evolved independently at least three times, by three different animal groups: birds, bats, and insects. Now, a team of researchers at Georgia Tech has confirmed that a species of aquatic snail, the "sea butterfly" Limacina helicina, flaps its wing-like appendages the same way that some small insects use their wings to fly. Image Credit: Russ Hopcroft, Institute of Marine Science, University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF); and NOAA "In a remarkable example of convergent evolution, we show...