Left-coiling snail needed as mate for rare and unnamed snail

A rare left-coiling snail is on the lookout for love after being discovered by a snail-searching academic in Nottingham.

Professor Angus Davison, from the School of Life Sciences, is eager to find the newly discovered snail a mate after seeing success with a previous left-coiling rare snail called "Jeremy."

Prof. Davison is also asking the public to find a name for the snail, for which the public can submit suggestions here.

His previous campaign in 2016, helped find Jeremy, another rare left-coiling snail, a mate. As well as a mirror-imaged shell, Jeremy had genitals on the opposite side making it very difficult for the snail to mate with normal snails.

Jeremy eventually managed to find a mate, and deliver right-coiling offspring, before dying in 2017.

The offspring from Jeremy were used to show that the rare left-spiraling shell of some garden snails is sometimes a development accident, rather than an inherited condition. His previous work on snails had given insight into understanding how the left and right side of the body is established in other animals, including humans.

Now, Prof. Davison is on the search for another rare left-coiling snail after stumbling across one near his home, the night before he was set to leave the country to search for them.

The new snail, which is currently without a name, is a grove snail or Cepaea nemoralis, a very attractive, colorful and common snail in the UK.

The snail is a young adult so may live for several years.

Prof. Davison said, "In 28 years of working on snails, I have never found a left-coiling snail in the UK, so it was amazing to final find one near my home. Now, we are once again seeking the help of the public to find a mate, but this time to also find a name."

To name the snail go to tinyurl.com/snaillove or nottingham.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/namethesnail .