I’m quite curious about imaging the underside of a snail – I’ve seen them crawl upside down and even submerged in water- some questions I have. What microstructure do they have that enables such great adhesion? How do they breath under water? Do they have eyes? Can they sense light? How big are they -end to end? Are the permanently attached to their shell?
Anyways. Long story short- I didn’t have the heart to kill them ( even though I was highly tempted to crack their shell open).
Any tips on coaxing them out alive? I tried putting drops of MgCl2 solution to make them numb by deactivating their ion channels. Didn’t work very well 🙁
@Saad: excellent question. Also, the desire to image life live when it behaves the way it should – is fantastic. You will learn more.
Almost a year ago; I posted my adventures of imaging live snails. See here:
https://microcosmos.foldscope.com/?p=81
you need to watch the you tube videos – which are not embedded properly.
Secondly; since your snails are big; inwouldnlike the reflected microscopy trick. Look at videos where I image the wounds from the poison oak (I know you don’t want to be reminded).. But take a look. The trick is to use a reflected light.
Good luck..
Cheers
Manu
@manu – Nice post! That wriggling underbelly is awesome. I’ll look for tinier ones next time.
I was hoping there’d be a nice concoction of salts to douse them in and slide them out alive – so they wouldn’t feel a thing : )
Also – I need to rig myself a reflection mode – it’s high time!
@saad: For building a reflected light Foldscope setup – Very simple to do – just take a puncher (from George); punch a hole at a distance where your LED comes in for the specific phone you use; and you are done. Almost trivial..
cheers
manu
Oh! Thanks @manu.