I'm scrabbling through the soil, picking through the vegetation and scouring beneath the rocks for snails. As curator of molluscs this isn't unusual, but this time I'm in the middle of a tropical rainforest in northern Vietnam, 120km south-west of Hanoi. It is over 30C, humid, and I'm pretty sure I've just been bitten by another blood-sucking leech – but I think I have the best job in the world.

England’s second great World Cup success is to retire at the top of his game. Paul the Octopus, a common octopus who was born in Weymouth but now lives at the Oberhausen aquarium in western Germany, will not forecast any more football results, his keepers said, after the eight-legged oracle correctly chose the winners of eight games at the World Cup, including the victors of Sunday night’s final, Spain.

It looks like something out of a Salvador Dali dreamscape but this bizarre sea creature, which lived about 500 million years ago, turns out to have been the mother of all squids – indeed it is the ancestor of octopuses, cuttlefish and all other cephalopod molluscs.

This enjoyable PR job for the mollusc by an Oxford GP reveals that Patricia Highsmith was always accompanied by her pet snails, usually in her handbag but "carefully positioned under each breast" when travelling abroad.

The Independent has launched an enhanced UK video news offering following an innovative distribution deal with the Press Association and Octopus Media Technology.