With his love for soil and leafy vegetables, in many ways Ned the snail is like any other of his kind.
The common garden snail certainly looks normal at first glance, with eyes on the end of two antennae and a handsome brown shell.
However, Ned has rare anatomical problem that’s ‘ruining his love life’ and dooming him to ‘a chaste and sterile’ existence, scientists say.
The experts have therefore launched an international campaign to find him an equally-rare mate – and you might be able to help.
This latest ‘shellebrity’ was discovered by New Zealand nature lover and author Giselle Clarkson.
‘Something looked off. It was weird,’ she told New Zealand Geographic, having been weeding her Wairarapa garden.
‘For a second, I wondered if it was a different species or something.’
So, can you tell what it is that makes Ned so special?’
What makes Ned so unique? The pale-bodied snail is seen her crawling across a leaf in a small town in the Waiararapa, New Zealand
Ned’s coils are on the wrong side of his shell!
As any nature lover will know, snails have a ‘whorl’ – a pattern of spirals or concentric circles – found on only one side of their shells.
The large majority of snails have the spiral on the right side, but around one in 40,000 have the spiral on the left side.
Snails are asymmetrical, so when engaging in normal ‘face-to-face’ mating, two right-coiled snails fit together nicely like a jigsaw.
Conversely, one left-coiled snail and right-coiled snail don’t quite fit together properly when facing, so copulation can’t occur.
The upshot of this is it’s incredibly difficult (but not impossible) for left-coiled snails to find a partner with whom they can mate with.
‘When you have a right-coiling snail and a left-coiling snail, they can´t slide up and get their pieces meeting in the right position,’ Clarkson said.
‘So a lefty can only mate with another lefty.’
Ned (right) has a left-spiralling shell. He’s pictured with a right-spiralling snail (left), which are a far more common find around the world
Ned – named after left-handed character Ned Flanders in ‘The Simpsons’ – was found by Ms Clarkson when she was weeding her home vegetable patch in Wairarapa.
‘I knew immediately that I couldn´t just toss the snail back into the weeds with the others,’ said.
Instead, she sent a photo of the snail to her colleagues at New Zealand Geographic, which launched the ‘Let’s find a mate for Ned’ campaign.
The campaign is telling gardeners to ‘head out into the garden and have a rummage’ for another left-coiled common garden snail.
If anyone finds a left-coiled one, they’re urged to contact publisher@nzgeographic.co.nz.
It’s unclear where a romantic rendezvous would take place, which might necessitate international air travel for Ned or his prospective partner.
Snails are ‘hermaphrodites’ meaning they have both male and female body parts (located on their necks), so can reproduce on their own without the need for another mate.
However, they only do this in the absence of a suitable mate and much prefer to hook up with another snail – making them true romantics.
Ned (bottom) a pale-bodied snail who has a left-spiralling shell is pictured with a right-spiralling snail (top) in a small town in Wairarapa
Snails may have the ‘biochemical potential’ to feel love even if there’s no evolutionary reason for it, according to experts at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
‘They engage in reproductive behaviors, but we don’t know whether they feel love or pleasure during reproduction,’ they say.
Although Ned is very rare, it’s not the first time a lonely lefty snail has captured the world’s attention.
Jeremy the lefty snail – who was named after former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – went viral on social media in 2017 having been found in London.
Jeremy then became part of a tragic love triangle when two lefty mates found for him ended up procreating with each other instead.
Finally, left-coiled snails later mated with Jeremy, producing 56 offspring all of which had right-coiling shells, before passing away.
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .