Jeremy the lonely, lefty snail was an accident, experts find

JEREMY the snail’s left-coiling shell was a developmental accident, scientists have discovered, ending hopes that “lefties” could be bred.

Researchers at the University of Nottingham found the unusual shell was a genetic fluke rather than an inherited characteristic after four years spent finding Jeremy a mate and getting the hermaphrodite snails to breed.

The gastropod rose to fame after researchers at the university asked the public to hunt for a mate for Jeremy, whose mirror-image shell with genitals on the opposite side made it difficult for it to mate with other snails.

After years of study – and finding the lonely snail a fellow “lefty” to breed with – they have found that the genetic quirk is probably a fluke, rather than passed down from parents.

Dr Angus Davison, an evolutionary geneticist at the university, explained: “We have learned that two lefties usually make a right, at least if you are a garden snail. In other snails, being a lefty is an inherited condition, but we still don’t know how they do it.

“If we are able to find out, then this may help us understand how the right and left side of other animal bodies are defined. We tried to recreate what made Jeremy different, but this was not possible. Jeremy was special.”

Snail hunters managed to find 40 lefty snails and some were sent to be possible mates. Success was achieved shortly before Jeremy died when one mate, Tomeu (below), produced 56 babies, about one third of which were likely to have been Jeremy’s offspring.

Over three years, nearly 15,000 eggs were hatched from four generations of snails. Dr Davison said: “Our findings showed that it is usually a developmental accident rather than an inherited condition that makes a lefty garden snail.”

The findings were published in the journal Biology Letters.