Scientists named a new snail after Jimmy Buffet's song 'Margaritaville' because it doesn't move but is somehow bright yellow

The snail lives within its shell like tube, burrowed into a rock or other substrate.

Bieler et al. (2023), PeerJ, DOI 10.7717/peerj.15854

• Scientists have discovered a new sea snail that has similar coloring to a margarita cocktail. 
• The bright yellow snail inspired its name Cayo margarita — a nod to Jimmy Buffet's song "Margaritaville."
• Scientists aren't sure why the snail is so yellow but think it may be a defense mechanism.

Scientists discovered a mysterious new species of sea snail in the Florida Reef, and named it as a tribute to Jimmy Buffet's famous song "Margaritaville." 

The biologist who first spotted the tiny snail, Rüdiger Bieler, said the coloring reminded him of a margarita cocktail.

"We really wanted to allude to the color of the drink and the fact that it lives in the Florida Keys," Bieler told CNN.

The new species is called "Cayo margarita," according to a paper published by a group of scientists in Peer J journal. 

Cayo margarita has confused scientists studying it — the snail rarely moves throughout the course of its life, but its bright coloring makes it an easy target for predators who can spot it. 

But, strangely, when fish approached the bright snail, they didn't eat it. Instead, as scientists observed, they actually swam away. 

The eggs of the Cayo margarita are also bright yellow, like the snail itself.

Rüdiger Bieler

How the little thing lives 

The researcher who first spotted Cayo margarita on a scuba dive said that the snail's bright-yellow coloring might actually be a defense mechanism, warning its predators to stay away — and that it doesn't taste very good.

It's eggs, which are even more defenseless than the adult snails, are that color too. 

However the adult snail does have some defense aside from its scary color. It lives inside its shell in a sort of tube.

The tube is about 10 millimeters long and 4 mm across, which makes it the height of about seven dimes stacked on top of each other and a little less wide than three strands of spaghetti put together. 

It burrows one end of its tiny body into rock, coral, or the shells of other mollusks, and keeps the other end exposed, so it can catch food.  Since the snail stays in one place, it can't venture out for food like most other species.

It instead, creates a sticky mucus web that traps food.

It's not the only species that lives like this. The snail is in the same family as a species called Thylacodes vandyensis that invaded the Florida Keys  in 2017, CNN reported.

Luckily, scientists think that the Cayo margarita is a local species, and is simply enjoying its time exisiting in the ocean, like their namesake. 

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