Lonely snail looking for love. Must be a ‘lefty’
Scientists appeal to public for a second snail to mate with Jeremy – but one that shares its rare anticlockwise-spiralling shell
TO MOST of us, Jeremy the garden snail may look just like any other of its fellow molluscs.
But to would-be partners, the unfortunate gastropod is lacking in sex appeal, because its shell spirals the wrong way, meaning it cannot mate.
The snail was born with a rare genetic mutation in which the shell winds out from the centre in an anticlockwise direction.
But it’s not just the aesthetics of its eccentric exterior which is putting off suitors. Its left-handed make-up means its sex organ is also on the wrong side and unless it finds another snail with a similar abnormality, it simply cannot have sexual relations.
Snails mate face-to-face, sliding past each other on the right hand side so that their genitalia can meet. To copulate Jeremy must beat one in a million odds to find another snail which also has left-handed sex organs compatible with its own. Yet there is hope. The University of Nottingham is keen to study the genetics of left-sidedness, or “sinistral mutation” and so is on the hunt for a partner for Jeremy so it can study their offspring.
“This really is an exciting find – I have been studying snails for more than 20 years and I have never seen one of these before,” said Dr Angus Davison, associate professor at the university’s School of Life Sciences. “We are very keen to study the snail’s genetics to find out whether this is a result of a developmental glitch or whether this is a
genuine inherited genetic trait. It is very rare. It might even be one in a million.
“They mate in a face-to-face position and the genitalia are on the right-hand side of the body in a normal ‘righty’ snail, and that means when you get two snails of the opposite kind trying to mate the genitalia just don’t match up. They can’t get it together.”
Jeremy the snail – the unloved ‘lefty’ was not named after anyone in particular, the scientists insist – was originally found around a compost heap in Raynes Park, south-west London, by a retired scientist from the Natural History Museum, who spotted its unusual traits. Having heard about Dr Davison’s interest in snail genetics, he contacted the Nottingham scientist before sending it on in the post.
Scientists are calling on gardeners to scour their plots to see if they can find another snail with an anticlockwise shell. “This is something which everyone can get involved with and which you can easily do on your own doorstep,” added Dr Davison.
“There is a chance, because it is such a rare thing, that anyone who can find and identify another of these sinistral snails may even find themselves named as a contributor on a research paper we publish in the future as a result of this.”
Although christened Jeremy, as a snail it is a hermaphrodite, and can reproduce without a mate. “However, they don’t really like doing this,” added Dr Davison. “From our perspective, the genetic data from offspring of two lefty snails would be far richer and more valuable to
us.” It was only this year, in research published in the journal Current Biology,
that Dr Davison and colleagues at universities in Edinburgh, Germany and the US revealed they had discovered a gene that determines whether a snail’s shell twists clockwise or anticlockwise.
The same gene also affects body asymmetry in other animals, including humans, and research using these snails could help our understanding of how organs are placed in the body and why this process can sometimes go wrong when some or all of the major internal organs are reversed from their normal placement.
Anyone who thinks they have found a sinistral snail can email a picture of it to angus.davison@nottingham.ac.uk or tweet using the hashtag #snaillove.
Amillion snail-lovers all over Britain have been combing their gardens for a snail with a leftspiralling shell. Listeners to Today were moved to hear yesterday that if such a partner is not found for a similar snail called Jeremy, then he will be unable to mate. It’s a snail thing. Garden snails are wonderfully contrived for the life they lead. In hot weather they seal up their shell against desiccation with a front-door of dried slime. In moist conditions they come into their own, speeding (in snail terms) to vegetation to chomp with serrated mouth-parts resembling a retractable file. The sexual life of snails is no less remarkable. Their lengthy conjugation entails the throwing out of love darts, tiny pointed javelins, like boneharpoons carved by Eskimos. Perhaps it was an oversimplification to present Jeremy as an eligible bachelor. For snails are, frankly, hermaphrodites. So the rare sinistrally spiralled specimen might be better known as Jeremima, waiting for his/her soulmate Jemeremy. Only then can we look forward one day to the slither of tiny gastropoda.