Soon, a local couple invited him to their house and showed him five 25-gallon trash bags filled with painted snail shells. They had “easily, easily 30,000,” D’Amicis estimates.

A tiny new snail species discovered in Thailand has been named after legendary artist Pablo Picasso, due to the strange, complex geometric patterns seen on its shell.

All the houses in my 1980s-built neighborhood were painted in just a few dull repetitive colors. They are essentially all the ...