Uncommon New Zealand snail filmed laying an egg from its neck for first time

A Mount Augustus snail laying an egg via its neck in Hokitika, New Zealand.
| Picture Credit score: AFP

The unusual reproductive habits of a giant, carnivorous New Zealand snail have been as soon as shrouded in thriller. Now footage of the snail laying an egg from its neck has been captured for the primary time, the nation’s conservation company mentioned Wednesday.

What appears like a tiny hen’s egg is seen rising from a gap under the top of the Powelliphanta augusta snail, a threatened species endemic to New Zealand.

The video was taken at a facility on the South Island’s West Coast, the place conservation rangers making an attempt to avoid wasting the species from extinction have cared for a inhabitants of the snails in chilled containers for almost twenty years.

The situations within the containers mimic the alpine climate of their solely former habitat — a distant mountain they have been named for, on the West Coast of the South Island, that has been engulfed by mining.

Lisa Flanagan from the Division of Conservation, who has labored with the creatures for 12 years, mentioned the species nonetheless holds surprises.

“It’s exceptional that in on a regular basis we’ve spent caring for the snails, that is the primary time we’ve seen one lay an egg,” she mentioned in a press release.

Like different snails, Powelliphanta augusta are hermaphrodites, which explains how the creatures can reproduce when encased in a tough shell. The invertebrate makes use of a genital pore on the fitting aspect of its physique, slightly below the top, to concurrently change sperm with one other snail, which is saved till every creates an egg.

Every snail takes eight years to achieve sexual maturity, after which it lays about 5 eggs a 12 months. The egg can take greater than a 12 months to hatch.

“A few of our captive snails are between 25 and 30 years outdated,” mentioned Flanagan. “They’re polar opposites to the pest backyard snail we launched to New Zealand, which is sort of a weed, with 1000’s of offspring every year and a brief life.”

The handfuls of species and subspecies of Powelliphanta snails are solely present in New Zealand, largely in rugged forest and grassland settings the place they’re threatened by habitat loss.

They’re carnivores that slurp up earthworms like noodles, and are a number of the world’s largest snails , with outsized, distinctive shells in a variety of wealthy earth colours and swirling patterns.

The Powelliphanta augusta was the middle of public uproar and authorized proceedings within the early 2000s, when an vitality firm’s plans to mine for coal threatened to destroy the snails’ habitat.

Some 4,000 have been faraway from the positioning and relocated, whereas 2,000 extra have been housed in chilled storage within the West Coast city of Hokitika to make sure the preservation of the species, which is sluggish to breed and does not adapt nicely to new habitats.

In 2011, some 800 of the snails by accident died in a Division of Conservation fridge with defective temperature management.

However the species’ sluggish survival continues: In March this 12 months, there have been almost 1,900 snails and almost 2,200 eggs in captivity, the conservation company mentioned.