November 28, 2016
A nationwide search to find a
mate for a 'one in a million' rare mutant garden snail has been successful.
In October, Dr Angus Davison in
The University of Nottingham's School of Life Sciences appealed to the public
for their help in match-making for Jeremy, who with a left-handed,
anti-clockwise spiralling shell is a mirror image of other brown garden snails.
Dr Davison needs the offspring
from Jeremy and another left-coiling or sinistral snail to be able to study the
genetics of this rare condition, which may offer valuable insights into a
common understanding of body asymmetry in other animals, including humans.
Following the appeal via the
national media and a #snaillove hashtag on Twitter, Jeremy became a media
sensation, with his story featuring on prime time BBC current affairs and
comedy programmes including BBC Radio Four's Today Programme, Have I Got News
For You and No Such Thing as the News.
His stardom has led to him being
paired with Lefty the snail from Ipswich, whose owner Jade Sanchez Melton heard
about the appeal from a member of the Conchological Society of Great Britain
and Ireland.
Jade said: "Scientifically
speaking, this is something which I believe has never been done and I am going
to be fascinated to see whether breeding these two snails will result in more
lefties or whether their offspring will feature the more common clockwise
coiling shells."
Jade has had a fascination with
snails from a very young age and keeps and breeds a variety of the molluscs as
pets. She keeps more than 300 snails in 30 tanks and one aquarium and her
collection includes native UK species and water snails, as well as a variety of
South American snail and the impressive Giant African Land Snail, which grow up
to 20 cm in length.
Jade discovered Lefty just under
a year ago, crawling up a tree, and immediately recognised it as something
special, initially suspecting that it may be an imported species of some kind.
Jeremy has been taken to Ipswich
to meet Lefty and Jade will be observing them for around two weeks to see
whether they mate. She will be looking for obvious signs of a pairing that
would include the presence of so-called 'love darts', sharp spikes made of
calcium which snails stab into each other's bodies during the process of
mating, and of course, any eggs resulting from a union.
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