Smallest land snail

What to remember

Discovered in Borneo and described in November 2015, the land snail Acmella nana measures 0.7 mm (0.028 in). That length puts it among the smallest known organisms.

The size of a living thing can be expressed by volume, mass, height, length or even genome size, and each yardstick crowns a different winner. Scientists also stress that knowledge of life on Earth is incomplete, so the smallest organism of all may not have been discovered yet.

For scale, the smallest organisms recorded at all may be archaea about 200 nanometres long. Next to them Acmella nana looks bulky, yet no smaller land snail is known.