Giant African Land Snails: What The Shell Is Going On?

I'm going to start this post with a dramatic opening, so hold onto your hats. 

Picture a young boy having an adventurous holiday to Hawaii with his family. Said boy is exploring the island when he encounters a trail of slime, which leads him to a mysterious creature... 

What is it? A snail!

'Wow' said the boy, "I love snails!" And he decided to place a few of the creatures into his pockets.

The holiday in Hawaii ended and boy, snails and family returned to their native Florida.

Though the holiday was over, the boy's burning love for the snails was undimmed. So boy and snails enjoyed a glorious friendship; laughing, joking, playing cards. You know, all the normal boy-snail activities.

Until one day, the boy got bored of his snails, and possibly also frustrated at how they kept beating him at poker. He'd had enough, and so he handed the snails over to his dear grandmother.

However, she was obviously not enamoured with the snails, and so she set them free in her back yard.

What Grandma didn't know was this. The snails happened to be giant African land snails (Lissachattina fulica). They grow to 1ft long and can weigh a full pound. Oh... and they're also highly invasive.

Giant African land snail in a human hand to give size context.

One reason for this is that although a snail's pace usually means something happens incredibly slowly, these beastly snails happen to reproduce incredibly quickly due to their hermaphroditic nature. So these snails actually breed like rabbits.

Now that's escargot-ing to cause some problems!

Sorry, couldn't resist...

The story described above actually took place during the 1960s and the eradication of the snails took seven years. So, all done and dusted then?

Nope.

The snail was re-introduced to Florida in 2011, possibly related to 'voodoo-like religious proceedings'. Robert Cowie, a biologist at the University of Hawaii has stated that the snail's slime is coveted in certain South American rituals and so practitioners may have let them roam free in the hope they would breed and produce more of the slime. 

In the 1960s, there were 17,000 snails collected. However, the magnitude of this recent invasion is significantly greater, with 137,000 collected during the past two years.

The snails have been known to eat around 500 economically important plants and they've even been tucking into some nutritious houses! You may think I'm joking, but they calcium in stucco helps them to maintain their growth.

They can also cause human health problems if ingested and puncture car tyres if you happen to drive over one. If that happened to me, well, I'd be shellshocked!

Florida has decided to take a stand against the snails, and has put millions of dollars into eradication efforts. This has been done by using regular snail poison and by providing a phone number for reported sightings. 

The result has been containment of the snail to the Miami area, and containment is certainly better than having them roaming all over the state.

Over and out

The Invader Inspector

Check out this article for more on the Giant African Land Snail