A nautilus: a mass extinction event survivor in a spiral shell which reflects galaxies | Helen Sullivan

How does a species survive hundreds of millions of years unfazed? You must live in a shell - and it must grow with you, chamber by chamber

Where to start with the nautilus: at the centre of the spiral or its culmination? Its eye works slowly, like a pinhole camera. It swims like a bellows. It can live for two decades, and its eggs take a year to hatch. It is a cephalopod in a shell, a spiral no wider than the length of a ruler, ending in 70 tentacle-like wavy bits. The tentacle-like bits are called cirri and they are very good at touch and smell.

One scientist describes it like this: Right now everything's in bloom, and, you know, you can smell the azaleas. But can you imagine if you could also say, That azalea bush has 3,002 blossoms on it.'" (Their favourite things to touch and smell are not flowers but anything rotting.)