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Professor Ke Caihuan of College of Oceanography and Environmental Science at Xiamen University said it is the first time that he heard that a snail can clean people’s eyes and he never saw such a snail before.

Mr. Lin, the snail owner, had kept the snail for 44 years. He said someone who had dust in their eyes can put the snail under the eyelids. It would move on the eyeball and ‘eat’ the dirt. After 10 minutes, you move it from the eyes and put it into clean water, and then it would spit out the dirt.

"To see the nervousness and uncertainty change to pure joy and euphoric smiles, when a person with a disability have conducted the first successful dive,... can move the most experienced diving instructor to tears”.

That´s how Flemming Thyge describes the emotion that has led him to dedicate much of his life to develop diving with disabilities worldwide.

In her new exhibition, Melt Down - Climate Change In The High Arctic, celebrated photojournalist and Arctic specialist Louise Murray highlights the dramatic melting of the ice sheets in the Arctic through a series of beautiful photographs. We have an exclusive gallery of images from the exhibition below.

Louise is a self-confessed polar nut with 15 years of experience as a professional, she spends much time plotting her next visit to the high north.

In what Australian officials called an outrageous fraud, Japanese fishers probably used a series of disguises for the overcatch and international investigations have found.

The fishers described southern bluefin tuna as a different species and evaded any inspection on shore, underreported the amount of the fish they caught, and imported it as different tuna either transhipped at sea from foreign vessels or in containers. In a review that the Japanese government has vetoed from public release, investigators found the fraud extended to consumer markets.

It has been widely known that sharks have a special sensory organ on their heads, called the ampullae of Lorenzini, which enable them to detect the very weak electrical fields that prey emit when they swim or bleed.

But now scientists have found that a gel-like substance plays a big role in this process known as electroreception, explaining why sharks pursue bloody victims, even when other easy target´s prey is around, and the gushing blood obscures the shark´s vision and smell.

North Cyprus is an ideal location for snorkelling and scuba diving, with its largely unspoilt coastline and year-round warm waters that rarely drop below 17 degrees centigrade. There are also no tides to worry about and you can enjoy one of the longest diving seasons in the world, which lasts from April through to the New Year. The island’s fascinating history spanning several empires also means there is much to explore underwater, including many exciting shipwrecks.

A study published in Nature demonstrates that fish have a natural rhythm that could help them avoid being eaten by predators

A team from the University of California led by Dr Mu-Ming Poo made the discovery during experiments with zebrafish, a type of minnow. They discovered that the larvae of the fish, which were trained to flip their tails every time a light flashed at six-second intervals, "remembered" the rhythm even after the flash was turned off.

The reason why the fish kept time was a mystery but it could be to help it keep track of time and defend itself.

The aim of this thesis was to study the chemical communication involved in aggressive and reproductive behaviours in the European lobster (Homarus gammarus). Both male and female H. gammarus established and maintained dominance, but the sexes used different strategies for dominance maintenance.

Male losers recognised individual fight opponents and avoided them but fought actively against unfamiliar dominants. In contrast, female losers avoided both familiar and unfamiliar dominants, indicating that they react to the dominance status of the opponent.