Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How Snails Work

Transcript

How Snails Work · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, if you've ever stepped on a snail and
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: didn't feel particularly bad about it, then you should probably
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: prepare for that to change. After listening to this episode,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: it turns out that snails aren't just mucusy. They're a
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: precious member of your garden club too. So go find
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: a snail, share an earbud with them so you can
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: listen to this episode together.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Slowcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry's here too. We're just inching along, doing
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: things our own way, our own speed, our own time,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: leaving a trail of mucus behind us as we do.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Wow, inch and along point five per second.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like that one guy said life is a highway.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: I want to write it all night long, covering only
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: an inch.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: Was that the parenthetical of that title?
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah? It was. It was you had to read between
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: the lines, Yeah, exactly, what a great song?
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Or play it backwards? That song you think is great?
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do. I do. If you take away all
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: the it's actually a great song. It's very upbeaaten enthusiastic
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: and very this is a good song.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Who was that?
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I I don't remember. I think that might have been
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: his only song. Although now I've said that, I'm sure
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: he's a huge sensation in Canada or something, and now
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: everybody's gonna be mad at us.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that happens a lot.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: We'll find out. But anyway, whoever you are out there,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: who made that song? For listening, Breton cap off to you.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: That's right, Chuck, I picked this one.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: He's Canadian.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: I knew it, dude, I knows that always happened. I
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: What's his name, Tom Cochrane.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: I wanted to say Tom, but I wanted to say
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Tom brokecall and I was like, I'm not even going
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: to bring that up.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: And you know what, he's in the Canadian Music Hall
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: of Fame.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Oh my god.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Oh right, So so much for that.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Okay at any rate, Hats off Tom Cochrane, I think,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: is what I was trying to say.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Right, m hm.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: So we're doing an episode on Snails, which I'm kind
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: of psyched about. Our new good friend Allison helped us
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: with this one. I believe this is our second one
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: and she's doing great.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, was this a listener recommendation.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: No, this was a Josh recommendation.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Okay, I didn't know if this was. You know, we
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: did some stuff recently with kids in the classroom, like
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: little virtual appearance appearances for our book stuff kids should know, huh.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: And I know we got a lot of ideas and
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: just for some reason, I thought snails might have been
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: one of those.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Not a single one of those came up with the
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: idea of snails. It was really sad.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Kids these days and don't even know what snails are.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Snails that was was my pick, and I'm not sure
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: where it came from. I think I just pulled it
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: out of my head, but I'm glad I did, because
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: this is one of those things where, I mean, snails
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: are everywhere. Everyone knows what a snail is, like, it's
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: just a part of living on earth, you know about snails.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: And yet what Alison turned up and I wasn't aware
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: of when I selected this, there's actually a bit of
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: a dearth of information academic information on snails specifically, and
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: that a lot of what we think we know about
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: them is actually just like old yarns that gardeners have
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: come up with over the years. So I love topics
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: like that, And actually, from researching this, I've come to
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: actually really appreciate snails like I Actually I kind of
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: think they're cute now, just from watching them in some videos.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Well, I looked up a picture of the h and
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: we'll talk about these in a little more till later,
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: but that giant African snail, and there was one picture
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: of a woman holding one of these things. Yeah, and
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: I swear it looked like a bunny rabbit with a
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: turtle shell.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Weird. I've not seen that picture.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: It looked like a bunny. I mean, it's a snail, clearly,
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: it didn't look that much like a bunny, right or
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: was it like what in the world?
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Maybe it was eating a bunny? Is that what it was?
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: I don't think so. But you were right, Allison was
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: keen to point out that malacology, which is someone who
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: studies molluscs, it's just I guess there's just not a
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: ton of those people out there, So there just tend
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: to be more people studying, you know, furier, cuter things
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: than snails.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: I guess, right, exactly. And even if you do have
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of malacologists, they're studying mollusks and snails just
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: make a part of one class of a larger phylum
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: of mollusca. They're part of gastropoe And it's not just
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: snails in Gastropoda. We're talking slugs, sea slugs, conks, whelks, limpets. Basically,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: all snail like creatures are in the Gastropoda class.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: So they're gastropodes.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or gastropods.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Okay, I didn't know how that was pronounced, So.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: It's gotta be gastropod, right, I.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: Mean, I think it's gastropod, but would it be gastropoda?
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: No?
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Here is it one of those weird things that just
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: flips when you shorten it.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: It's that second thing. Okay, great, so I said, Also, Chuck,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: just living on Earth, you're aware of snails, and there's
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: a reason for that. They've been around for a really,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: really long time. They are everywhere, and you can even
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: if you're walking around Antarctica and you look down on
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: the ground, you might see a snail waving up to
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: you wearing a parka.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And even if you know, snails, as we will
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: find out, love moisture, even if you're in the desert,
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: even if you're in Arizona. Living there in Phoenix, you
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: might see a snail. Yeah, because there's still random water
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: here and there.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Plus also some of them have evolved to like
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: really hang on to their water better than other times,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: so they can survive in the desert. It's just nuts.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: They're everywhere. As a matter of fact, they think that
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: they there's about one hundred and fifty thousand gastropod species
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: in total, remember that includes slugs and all that stuff,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: But they think the snail species are between thirty thousand
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: and thirty five thousand. And I mean, you know, we
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: think of snails as typically like the little garden snail,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: maybe the s car ghost snail. I think that's the
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Roman snail if I'm not mistaken. But there are all
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: sorts of snails. You mentioned the giant African land snail.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Those things get I saw that they get to be
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: about the size of a human fists or bigger. That's
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: a big snail. But on the other end, there's another
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: type of snail that they recently discovered and I think
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Vietnam and Cambodia on the walls of caves and they
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: can fit inside like a grain of sand. They're that small.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: But if you look at them under a microscope, they
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: are very clearly snails.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw about five hundred native species to North America,
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: and we're generally going to be talking about, you know,
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: sort of your average land snail, but there are snails
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: that live exclusively in the water under the sea. It
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: would you know, there's just no way we could talk
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: about all the snails. So we're going to mainly concentrate
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: on the kind that leave that mucasi trail on the.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Sidewalk, right, Like, we could probably get through thirty four
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: thousand species today, but definitely not thirty five.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: Thousand, that's right, So we're not getting dry.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Okay. So the other thing that's kind of like a
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: bummer about snail species is that as long as we've
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: been scientifically paying attention to snails, we've recorded more than
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: four hundred extinctions of snail species. And there's an Atlantic
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: short documentary I think it's like twelve minutes long. I
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: think it's called Goodbye Snails, and it's set in Hawaii
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: where they're experiencing this crazy mass extinction of their native
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: snail species that exist nowhere else in the world. And
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: it's a really kind of a tense little documentary. But
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: the people who are trying to rescue these snail species
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: and prevent them from extinction are really doing some amazing
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: work over there.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's about a thousand of them that are land
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: snails alone that are endangered right now. So that's a
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: lot of species to be in trouble. So that's no
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: good because as we will see, they can there can
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: be invasive snails, and they can do some harm to
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: the garden, but they also do a lot of great
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: things for your garden and for the world.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, leave the snails alone.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: You ever read them?
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: I have, like once or twice. I'm not crazy about them, No,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: they're not. I'm not an S Cargo fan. I'm a
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: fan of that S Cargo joke though.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Right, which is a look at that S cargo?
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Is that what it was? What a snail painted an
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: ass on the side of his car?
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: That's right. That's a great elementary school kid joke.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Yep, that's wonderful. I was.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Trying to remember if I've ever I feel like I
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: might have tried it one time, many many many years ago,
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: because I do remember seeing snails floating in a buttery
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: solution on a plate and I think that was a
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: little tiny tong Yeah, that's involved, But I really had
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: a very very faint memory. So if I did try it,
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: I don't know under what circumstance it was, but it
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: was a long time ago, and it's it's not something
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: i'd really be into now.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: So you've been have like a specialized plate for serving them,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: and it basically doubles is like a doubled eggs serving
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: plate too. It's like, you know, got a bunch of
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: depressions in it that the snails sit in.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Right, I'd rather have a double legg You can also
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: eat snail eggs. They call it white caviar. Oh yeah, yeah,
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: it's a thing. There's a I think it's like one
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: hundred and thirty bucks for about one point seventy five ounces.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Wow. Wow, well that's a lot of snail eggs now
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: that I think about it.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like it. I mean, it looks like
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: it comes a little tin like caviar. But although I
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: do love caviar, now, I don't think I would try
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: snail caviar.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay, I'll accept that answer.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: And I know I talked about a newish to caviar
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: just the past couple of years. So was it something
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: I ever had until semi recently, But.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Now you have it at dinner every night.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Just you've heard an avocado toast every morning. I just
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: have caviar toastut all over the biggest peace of sour
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: dough I can.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: With gold flakes on top.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: All right, Should we talk about the body of a snail?
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like we kind of have to because
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of misconceptions people have about snails, including me,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: as far as their body goes.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we can talk about their shell for
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: a little bit. They have that. Well, we'll talk about
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: the shell kind of through out. It's obviously a protective device.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: Snail can pull themselves back into that shell, and they
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: can actually put a little I think it's called an epigram,
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: and that is like a it's like a front door. Basically,
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: it's a temporary front door that they can put on
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: the whole of that shell. So if you ever pick
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: up a snail shell and it's covered with something, that
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: is a temporary front door that a snail uses to
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: keep people like you from poking around into that snail shell.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I saw that some of them have denticles
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: on their life like sharp kind of tooth like projections,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: so that if a predator tries to come in there
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: after them, they'll get all torn up. Oh. On the epigram, yeah,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: it's like those reverse tire damage things that like a
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: car rental parking lot. It's like that.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: From what I understand, that's pretty cool. And it also
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: keeps some moist because what a snail does not want
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: to do is dry out, because once again, a snail
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: is basically a slug with a helmet on.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Right, So I'd like to talk a little bit about
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: the misconceptions of how the snail body is arranged, if
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: we can.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Let's do it.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Inside that shell is the actual body of the snail.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: What we see as the head in the tail is
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: actually the head, true. But what looks like the tail
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: is actually like the heel of its foot. That's what
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: it's moving around on. Is its foot, right, it's single
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: foot exactly, and so above on top of that is
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: the whole body and all that is encased in the shell.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: And what's weird is there's one opening that the what'd
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: you say covers the opening.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: The I think it's called an epigram. Okay, I'm sorry,
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: I've been saying epigram, epiphram, epifray, diaphram.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, gotcha. So what the epifram covers is called the aperture.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: And on land snails, there's one aperture. There's one way in,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: one way out. And because all of their body is
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: tucked up in the shell, they still got to poop,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: they've still got to breathe, they still have to do
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: all the stuff that requires the outside atmosphere. And so
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: what they've done is they've figured out how to double
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: their bodies around so that their head and their tail,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: including their anus, are basically right next to one another
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: at the aperture at the opening of their shell.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of like on top of their head. And
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: this is something called torsion, which means to twist. You know,
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: if you've heard of something, you've heard of torsion before. Probably.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Chubby Checker was going to call his dance the torsion,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: and he's like, this doesn't have the right ring. Let's
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: do the torsion, right, A traveler from the future came
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: back in time and told him, no, we should call
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: this the twist. Rocked out the high school dance, and
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: that was history.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: That's pretty good. You did you think of that one beforehand?
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: No? No, okay, no I didn't. I've just gotten that
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: good this late in the year.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: I love it. So. Yeah, that body basically doubles back
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: one hundred and eighty degrees on top of itself. And
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of debate. I mean, should we get
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: into that, like the great torsion debate.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we can at least touch on it. Sure, it's
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: almost impenetrable if you're not a malacologist.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say so. So as far as when
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: torsion emerged, they're not exactly sure because you can't tell
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: from like a fossil whether or not a you know,
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: you can find a fossil of a shell, but the
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: torsion is happening within the shell, so you can't really
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: tell if it's been torsioned. Is that even a verb?
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know, torted, I was gonna say torted. I
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: didn't look it up, though, So I think tort it's right,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: let's say torted.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's torted. So you can't really tell
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: if it's been torted by looking at a fossil. And
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: so there's just been a lot of debate, like, obviously
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: this happened for a reason. No one knows exactly what
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: that was. And like you mentioned at the beginning, some
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: of the sort of old farmer's tails. One of those
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: is you might hear some gardening people say, oh, well,
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: actually they're asymmetry inside that shell provides balance, and that's
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: just not true.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: No, No, that's definitely not There's also one that back
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: in the day when they were all marine animals, because
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: land snails evolve from marine aquatic snails, that it was
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: a way to keep their hind quarters, their tails, all
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: that stuff from being bitten by a predator. Probably it
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: does make sense, it's probably not it what the two
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: biggest competing hypothesis are the rotation hypothesis and the asymmetrical hypothesis.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: And the rotational hypothesis the one that's been around since
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: like nineteen twenty nine, and it basically says that at
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: some point in the past, the the snail, some snail
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: mutant came along and twisted around during its development and
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: it became naturally selected because it was advantageous because it
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: allowed the snail to retract its head faster, whereas before
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: it would have had to retract the tail and then
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: the head. Now it can retract the head because it's
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: all it had to retract.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but that was just like a spontaneous thing, right, That's.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: What the that's what they think. But it's just such
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: a bizarre thing to have happen, especially in a single mutation,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: because again, what we're talking about is during the larval
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: development an body, it count it moves counterclockwise to one
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: hundred and eighty degrees, and so its circulatory and nervous
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: system forms a figure eight inside the shell. It's not
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: all just packed in there straight. It's all over the place.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: And because of that weird torsion thing, the entire right
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: side of its anatomy, including its organs, are just not there.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: It's all left side organ stuff. It all just got
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: moved over toward the inside of the shell because the
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: right side is pressed up against the shell itself, and
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: it's all because of torsion. And they just cannot figure
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: out why that would have happened in the past. And
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: clearly it could have happened as a as a like
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: a mutation that obviously did, but why would it have
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: been naturally selected for for hundreds of millions of years,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: which strongly implies that it was like an advantageous mutation.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would think so, right, Yeah, so that's.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Kind of like this debate that's going on that that is,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, you really have to understand snail at tom
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: me and evolutionary history to go much further in understanding
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: that debate. That's pretty much what I could glean from
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: the whole thing.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I would say hesitate even getting into that debate.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: If you've had a couple of drinks at the bar
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: and you're feeling a little squarely and you want to
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: dive into this hot conversation.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would staer clear, just take a.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: Break and have another drink and just relax.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or maybe it's time for you to go home.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, get a car to take you home, or
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: walk or whatever.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So that's very careful. Snails tort and we're not
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: sure exactly why, but what we do know the upshot
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: of it is that their body is double back on
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: itself and there their anus and their head are essentially
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: right next to each other.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. They also have a mouth and inside that
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: mouth is something called a radula. It's a it has
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: teeth on it, and it's like a it's kind of
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: like a tongue, and they have You know, if you
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: look at a snail and they turn those two little
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: tentacles to look back at you, that's because they have
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: eyes mounted on either one or two pairs of tentacles,
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: and they can look at you. They can't hear you.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: They don't have ears. From what I saw, snails are
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: basically deaf. But they can see you.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: They can see you, and depending on the species, there's
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: different types of eyes. Some have very simple eyes where
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: they can detect changes in light and dark or maybe
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: maybe movement. But there's some kinds I think that have
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: the ability to see you, to focus on you. And
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: because they're on the ends of those stalks, they can
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: retract the eyes themselves in the stalk, and then the
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: stalk into the head, and then the head into the shell,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: and then when they want to see if danger's gone,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: they can peak one of those stalks out from the shell.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Look around. Isn't that cool?
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: That's pretty cool? Yeah, I love it. And there's also
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: the mantle, and the mantle will come up quite a bit,
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: and the best I could figures that may mantle is
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: that area around the rim of the shell that connects
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: the foot in the head to the shell itself, right.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's also whatever holds all of our organs
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: and guts in place. That membrane is very analogous to
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: the mantle tissue of the snail because it holds all
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: the organs in place, but it also does something really important.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: It secretes all of the stuff that eventually is built
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: into the shell itself.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: So are we at the shell partner?
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: You think you know what? This is a good We're
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: twenty minutes in. I think we should take a break, yeah,
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: because that shell formation is quite a cliffhanger. Okay, and
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: we'll be right back after this, all right, So we
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: promised to talk to you a little bit about the shell.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: A snail shell is beautiful. You should never ever ever
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: smash a snail shell or a snail because that's animal
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: cruelty and it's a terrible thing to do, so just
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: don't do it. Right, But it is basically there's a
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: little bit of protein in there, but it's mainly something
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: called calcium carbonate, and it is, like you said earlier,
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: secreted by that mantle tissue, and it builds up over time.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: If you look at sort of the center part of
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: that shell. That's the oldest part of the shell. You
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: can tell a snail's age by how big that shell is.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: And that's also the hardest part of the shell because
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: it's been around longer. So they just keep adding material
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: along that outer edge little by little as it expands outward.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: And that is why a like the outer edge of
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: a snail shell will be much more you know, sort
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: of breakable than the inside harder part.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: That makes sense. So the oldest part is the closest
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: to the to the center.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Also I didn't realize this. They're born with a tiny
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: shell already attached. They just grow it over time by secrete.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Starter starter shell exactly and then cut.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're born like little tiny baby snails like that preformationism,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: uh theory from our things we used to believe before
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: the Scientific Method episode.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: So I also said, Chuck, the mantle holds the mantle
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: tissue holds all the the important guts and stuff like
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: that in place. And the way that snails breathe is
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: through the mantle cavity. They have blood vessels in there,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: but they breathe using kind of like a primitive. I
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: don't want to say long. I think that's kind of
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: a stretch. But basically they have an opening that.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: It's called a lung. I've seen it called the lung
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: in diagrams.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I've also seen it called a new numastome,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: and it's essentially a breathing port that they can open
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: and close using their muscles that takes in air and
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: exhales air. But it's pretty neat and it's right there
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: next to their head, right there at the aperture where
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: everything else that needs to be outside is.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they can if you're talking about sea snails,
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: Like I said, we're not going to get two into them,
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: but they can have similar body parts in terms of breathing,
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: or they can also have gills kind of upfront as well.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So one of the things snails are most famous
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: for is there mucus right Yeah, that is apparently secreted
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: by the foot, And as the foot moves along, it's
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: just a series of muscles that just kind of propel
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: as they ripple, propel the snail along, but they lay
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: down a trail of mucus that does a lot of
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: different things. For one, it allows the snail to do
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: some Spider man esque moves, like just crawl right up
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: the side of a building because it's very strong.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: It's glue like, Yeah, but it can be it's funny
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: because it can be glue like or act as a
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: lubricant exactly, which is pretty remarkable.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah, it also separates the snail from the
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: rest of the world that it's running over. Yeah, you know,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: it's strong like glue, but it also allows the snail
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: to move smoothly, and it also protects the snail's body
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: from sharp things that it might be crawling over slowly
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: crawling over. And it also keeps the moisture locked inside
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: so much so that snail mucin, as we'll see, has
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: been used for millennia as like kind of a skin thing.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: If you have very dry skin and you can get
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: your hands on snail mucan or mucous, it will cure
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: your dry skin.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's what keeps the I mean that
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: and other things is what keeps that snail moist. So
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: if it's keeping the snail alive, then imagine what it
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: can do for your crow's feet exactly. I only think
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: we said what was actually made of. It's enzymes, peptides, proteins,
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: trace minerals, and it's it's pretty remarkable stuff. It's you know,
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: the tailtale sign is when you see that stuff on
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: the sidewalk, and just the term snail trail itself, that
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: sort of snotty, glistening, shiny snail trail is you know,
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: it's become sort of part of the lexicon to you know,
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: as a stand in for other things at times.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: So yeah, for sure. So one of the other things
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: that the snail trail, the mucous trail does is it says, hey, sailor,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: come come this way, right, because it's one way that
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: snails find one another to mate, which is surprising that
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: they mate because they're hermaphroditic. They all snails, or most
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: species of land snails are equipped with both male and
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: female sex organs. But and when they come together to mate,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: it's there's no telling who's who or who's doing what,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: because in the end both of them often come away
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: with fertilized eggs.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, to me, this section is the most
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: remarkable stuff about snails. How they reproduce is just amazing.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: They are hermaphroditic because and it just makes sense, if
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: you're moving point five inches per second, you would die
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: out as a species if you if like a male
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: had to search for a female or the other way around.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: So they basically just double their chances of finding somebody
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: within the you know, ten feet or so that they're
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: they're wandering around. I mean they move more than that
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: within a lifetime, obviously, but you know, if it's that
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: time of year, which is what.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Like autumn, sure, autumn and spring.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: Autumn and spring, they're gonna wander around, they're gonna find
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: another snail. They're gonna dance around each other, and that
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: just means very slowly circle each other for I saw
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: four to six hours. I saw. The whole thing can
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: take up to twelve hours. It's a very obviously as
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: you would imagine, a very slow process.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: It is slow, but it's really involved, like they are
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: really into it. While they're they're going at.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: It, yeah, I mean they're they're and this is before
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: they're going at it. This is when they're just sort
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: of like sizing each other up. They're getting their steam,
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: they're touching tentacles, they're biting each other's lips. Things are
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: getting really pretty hot and heavy in there. And then
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: they have something that is amazing, and I don't know
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: if any other animal that has something like this. They
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: have something called a love what they call a love dart.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: A love dart only forms after the first mating, so
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: you have to have at least a little bit of
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: sexual experience to even form a love dart. Sure, they
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: take about a week to form, and you don't always
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: have to have one to mate, because if you've used
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: up your love dart and then you know within the
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: week you want to go at it again, you can
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: still do that. It's not necessary for reproduction, but it
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: helps in reproduction. They form in the dart sack and
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: is stored in a dart sack, and if you look
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: at it, it's a little It is a little dart.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: It's got this little sharp harpoon like tip and they actually,
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: it says they shoot it, but it doesn't like fly
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: through the air. It's more like a they stab one
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: another with it.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, I imagine it like ew and then just sailing
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: a couple feet and then spraying.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: That would be great. It's more like it's stabbing. But
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: apparently it's very imprecise. This hydraulic pressure builds up as
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: they circle and bite each other's lips and then they
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: shoot this thing out at each other and it can
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: I think about a third of the time it doesn't
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: even do it it's intended to do, which we'll get
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: to in a sect, but it can pierce organs. It
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: can go all the way through the head and out
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: the other side. So it's really crazy. It's a weird adaptation.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's super weird. And the I think what's
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: most weird about it to me is there's other animals
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: that do that to deliver sperm. That's not what the
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: snails are doing. These love darts deliver other hormones that
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: help protect the sperm as it makes its way to
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: the eggs to fertilize. It's like a really clumsy, superfluous
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: extra step that, like you said, doesn't even like they
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: miss a lot of the time. They still manage to
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: fertilize eggs. It's just a very strange thing that they do.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: But it's part of this really long, really slimy courtship mating,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: you know, process that they get involved in. And then
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: the sex itself is like just one rubs its foot
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: against the other foot and there you go.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: Right and they say who's pregnant which, and they go,
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: I don't know, Yeah, maybe.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Both of them, Yeah, both of us.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: Actually can it be both?
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I'm saying, that both both can walk
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: away with fertilized eggs after this.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they can lay. I think they can hatch
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: up to four hundred and fifty eggs per year, and
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: that doesn't take very long. Actually, right in the gestation
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: period it can be like really short.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: Right for some species, especially in captivity, it can be
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: twenty four hours. Others it seems like the outside is
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: four weeks, and usually in the while, it's like two
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: to four weeks for gestation.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and once those little guys are born, they may
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: immediately start eating the rest of the eggs as their
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: first meal.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's kind of a bummer, especially because leading up
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: to it, it's so cute, this little tiny snail with
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: its little tiny shells inside its egg, and it starts
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: tapping its way out until it cracks through the egg.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: And then yeah, it gruesomely eats its siblings very quickly.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it'll eat smaller siblings that have already hatched, not
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: just the eggs. What I didn't realize though, is that
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: some and that's actually not all snail species. That's ones
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: that will eat eggs, but for the most part they'll
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: eat just vegetation.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: The snail parent will often stay nearby to provide protection
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: for the young snail hatchlings for a little.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: While they hang out for a while, right, Yeah.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: I did not realize though, I thought it was pretty cool.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they can. They can hang out for up to
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: three months together while the parents are kind of protecting them.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: And like you said, they're born with that little baby
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: shell and just gets bigger and bigger. They did we
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: talk about how long they can live.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: No, we didn't. It's pretty spectacular.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean in the wild they can live up
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: to five years, which that shocked me quite frankly.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Really, I feel bad for all the snails you've
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: accidentally stepped on after a rainy evening.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: You hope at least they were old.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, like they had their time.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so five years is a pretty long time in
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: the wild. I think in captivity they can live up
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: to twenty five years, which is astounding.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah. There's a really great little short documentary called The
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Strange and Wonderful War Old of the Snail Wrangler. It's
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: on YouTube and it's about this woman who takes photos
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: of her snail friends in like little miniature settings, human settings.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: It's really cute, and she talks about one of her
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: snail companions that she's been with for like ten years.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: And it's just, I mean, when you think of it
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: like that, like snails are just so they're off doing
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: their own thing. They live in a world far different
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: from ours, even though we share the same geography. It's
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: just a different world. So when you cross paths with one,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: you're like, hey, alien, and they're probably like, hey, giant alien.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: And that's it. The idea that they're there in that
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: same patch as long as you are. In some cases,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: when you're like if you live at a house for
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: ten years, a snail might have lived there just as
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: long as you did for the same time, Like you
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: shared that with them that whole time. It's they're not
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: just this anonymous, generic animals running around there. They I mean,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: anything that lives that long, there's just something substantial to
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: it than you would think initially.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: Are you saying snail has the soul?
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: I think it's pretty clear.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, all right, so snails are doing their things. I
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: love this account that Alison found that was a scientist
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: from Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History that said snails
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: are leaky bags of water that survive on dry land.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: And it almost sounds like they're saying like they happen
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: to survive, because it doesn't seem like a snail was
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: really made for that environment. But they survive anyway because
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: snails really need to stay moist, like a snail drying out,
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: just like a slug, means certain death. So even though
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: there are snails in the desert, you're mainly going to
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: find snails in more moist areas. We're gonna say that
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: word quite a bit.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: I apologize, I was gonna say, unlike humans, moist is
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: a snail's favorite word. It really is.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: They do live on the ground, mainly if they're a
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: trust real snails, but they can live in trees, but
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: they really like it down there on the ground in
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: that sort of moist outer layer of decaying plant matter.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: They're pretty active at night because things can get wetter overnight,
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: as we know, like when you wake up with like
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: morning dew and stuff like that. So they're just down
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: there on the ground sometimes eating meat and other snails
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: and other eggs. But generally what they're doing is eating
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: and munching down on that either decaying plant matter, or
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: if you have a garden, they will also munch down
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: on your nice new fresh plants.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and as we'll see that, they run a foul
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: of gardeners for that reason. But just hold your horse
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: as gardeners, put your rubber mallets away for a second
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: until we get to that part and talk you out
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: of it. But in that leaf litter layer, they do
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: a lot of really important stuff they are in charge of,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: like recycling plant matter, decay stuff. They love decaying everything
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: in addition to live plants to they love dead plants.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: And when they're doing that, they're like recycling nutrients. They
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: eat that stuff, they break it down and they poop
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: it out, and that means it's bioavailable in the soil
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: for plants to use, for other animals to come along
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: and like that, like to lick the dirt, that kind
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: of thing. They also are really important in the food
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: web because calcium is not really easy necessarily to come
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: by in food, at least if you're like a small
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: like an invertbrate or a mammal or something like that.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: If you eat a snail shell, you get a burst
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: of calcium, so that snailshell is really important. And then
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: they're also chok full of protein themselves. So they're like
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: a really important part of any food web in the
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: ecosystem that they live in.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're also moving stuff around down there. I mean,
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: plant matter in that outer layer that just sits and
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: sits isn't great. But if they're if you've got thousands
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: of snails moving around through it, it's gonna help drainage out.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: It's going to help keep distributing those nutrients if there's
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: you know, it can help move dirt and clay even important.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: All that stuff is great. And they can actually help
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: pollinate too. Some of them are nighttime pollinators. They get
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: in there with that plant nectar, they eat that stuff
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: and then they poop that out as well.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty crazy. I had no idea that they were pollinators.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: It just makes them even more important, you know what
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: I mean totally. So I think, Chuck, we take a
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: break and then we come back and talk about why
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: you should leave the snails alone. How about that.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: Let's do it.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: So one thing that we said earlier, Chuck, was that
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: snails run a foul of gardeners, and the reason why
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: is because they will, I mean, they will eat a
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: lot of plants. The Burgundy snail also known as the
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: Roman snail, the one that's mostly used for s cargo
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: these days. They weigh twenty gramsish as an adult, but
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: they'll eat six grams of plant matter in a day. Yeah,
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: you have a bunch of burgundy snails running around your garden.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: They're gonna eat your hostas, they're gonna eat your seedlings.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: They're going to tick you off. And so there's a
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: lot of a lot of animosity that gardeners have towards
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: snails and slugs too, and so they people have been
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: trying things to get rid of snails for a very
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: long time. The problem is number one, you don't actually
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: want to get rid of snails, especially native snails or
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: common garden snails. And number two, the meta that's typically
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: used are chemical and they can harm other life as well. Yeah,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: so there's you basically want to leave the snails alone
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: as much as possible.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. There is some information here that Allison got from
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: the Royal Horticultural Society in Britain, and they say, you know,
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: don't use chemical pesticides please, Like, if you want to
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: get rid of your snails, you can try and do
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: so naturally by introducing predators. I guess you know, you
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: throw a bunch of garden beetles out there and see
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: what happens. Just say, whoever whoever walks out of here
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: alive is, you know, deserves to live. It's like the
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: Thunderdome exactly. To enter one leaves.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, if you're bored, just go
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: ahead and build a small scale replica up the thunderdome
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: and put the snail in the beetle in you.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: That's right, But then you have to act like Tina
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Turner and use that voice when he raggedy snail. That's
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: what you would have to call it.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: That was a great impression, by the way, Chuck, thank you.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: In addition to putting them in a death match against beetles,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: you can go pick them out yourself. If you go
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: out at night with the flashlight, you can pick pick
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: up plenty of snails.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: The thing is you put them in your neighbor's guard.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, Especially if they're a jerk hosta grower, they
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: will really drive them crazy. Now what you want to
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: do is put them on your compost pile, because again,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: they like decaying stuff and they're really useful, so they'll
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: be pretty happy there. And you can also trap them
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: by carving out like melons or grapefruit or something like that,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: and they'll be attracted to that, and it's just basically
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: acts as a trap. You just throw it back on
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: your compost pile the next day and there you go.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Some people do, say you some people still use pesticides
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: if you're if you're organic, use feric phosphate, which interrupts
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: their abilit to digest so they die of starvation in
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: a few days. There's another one called metaldehyde that is
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: hardcore stuff. It desiccates them. They end up dehydrating to death,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: and it's banned in the EU because they consider it
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: unacceptably harmful to birds and mammals. Of course, here in
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: the US you can use it as much as you like.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: Of course you can.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: And they use it for the giant African land snail
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: in particular, because again metaldehyde is hardcore stuff, and it
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: turns out that the giant African land snail is hardcore snail.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a hard core snail obviously would be an
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: invasive species here in North America. These are the big ones,
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: the one that look like a bunny. I thought they
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: can be eight inches long. They eat more than five
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: hundred species of plant. They will eat everything in their paths,
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: including in Florida. They're a real problem in Florida. Apparently
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: they will eat the stucco off your house to get
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: more calcium, and they can pass disease along to people
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: and animals. Youah, rat lungworm, Yeah, meningitis. I've seen that there.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: They can carry a host of parasites, or they can
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: host a host of parasites, some of which will is
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: you know, good for the snail because it keeps animals
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: from eating them, So it's like a defense mechanism, right,
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: But that can be harmful to people at times as well.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you don't want rat long worm. Like you said,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: it can create meningitis in humans. So it's best to
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: not really handle snails with your bare hands, and especially
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: don't eat the snail alive from your garden. That's a
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: really bad idea.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but people actually collect and I'm not sure if
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: that's how they got here, but people collect these, you know,
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: as an illegal pet, these giant African land snails.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: That's my understanding that they were imported as illegal pets,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: at least to south in the world.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: Are people doing.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but they also have been have shown
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: up in some other places, including Hawaii and Polynesia, and
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: somehow they got from Florida to these places, probably through
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: the illegal pet trade. And so, in just typical human
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: fashion in the fifties, people said, well, wait, there's this
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: snail called a rosy wolf snail, and it's a predator.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: It's a little literal snail predator. It's just important bunch
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: of them to take care of this giant African land
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: snail because I'm sure nothing will possibly go wrong because
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: of this plan. It's foolproof. And that's what they did,
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: and as a result, Hawaii has lost almost all of
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: its native snail species in the wild because the rosy
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: wolf snail was like, I'd just rather eat these other
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: kinds of snails than leave the giant African snail alone.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, these things are pretty creepy, though. I imagine there's got
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: to be some kind of nat geo video of the
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: wolf snail, like, you know, following its prey because for
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: a snail, they're moving pretty fast. Yeah, when they're tracking something,
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: they go double to triple their normal speed. They will
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: go up a tree after something. They will go underwater
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: after something for a little while until they need to
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: come up. It seems like they're just tenacious little fellas
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: and they will go after something until they catch it.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they like to swallow other snails whole, including
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: their shell.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: And there's a malacologist named Harry g Lee who dissected
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: a rosy wolf snail and found thirteen other snails shells
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: in its gut.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a lot, a lot. It's like in a
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: Louisiana state license plate.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. So, Yeah, you don't want these things on
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: your beautiful, pristine island. And once you bring them in,
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: they're going to cause all sorts of problems. And that's
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: what that Goodbye Snail video was about. It's definitely worth watching.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: But the rosy wolf snail is definitely considered invasive. And
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: what I didn't know, Chuck, is the common garden snail,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: the one we're so familiar with, is considered invasive in
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: the United States. Corn new espresso, that is the common
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: garden snail, and it was originally important because it was
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: the one that used to be es cargo, and some
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: of them escaped from farms and set up shop in
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: the wild. And now it's called the common garden snail
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: because it became so prolific.
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they don't know when people started eating es cargo.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: And I think es cargo is is the French name
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: for that edible snail. And also doubles is the name
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: of the dish.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, yeah, I think you're right, like French things both.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, people like this stuff. It was always,
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: you know, growing up, you always heard about es cargo
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: was like this, you know, sort of as a as
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: a kid, the first fancy, weird food you'd heard of.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: Probably do the wealthy have no bounds kind of.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And then you know, we've got all signs. Should
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: we finish up with just a bunch of kind of
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: cool factoids, Yeah, for sure. Well. Jewelry. Snail shells have
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: always or have long been used as jewelry for humans,
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: as some of the oldest known human jewelry. They found
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: the stuff like necklaces and stuff made of sea snail
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: shells that date back like at least one hundred and
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: twenty thousand years.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: That's nuts man.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what else?
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: The author Patricia high Smith, who was a very interesting
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: person in her own right. She wrote The Strangers on
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: a Train and the Talented Mister Ripley novels. She was
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: a snail pal like the snail wrangler in that video
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: that I talked about, And like the snail wrangler in
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: that video that I talked about, she would go out
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: in public with her snails as companions. There's a story
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: of Patricia Highsmith at a party who was revealed to
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: have dozens of snails in her purse who she brought
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: so she'd have someone to talk to her snail friends.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how about that?
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: How about that? That's what snail people do? Is that
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: kind of thing?
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah. This is really interesting is they've been studying
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: how snails might help us figure out Alzheimer's disease. From
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: what I found is they've you know, we've talked about
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: Alzheimer's before, which is when you have these amyloid plaque
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: build up or plaques I guess that build up on
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: the brain tissue, and they don't exactly know how it
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: causes memory loss, but this is what they're trying to
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: figure out what the snails. These plaques are formed from
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: a protein called amyloid beta, which we've talked about, or
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: a beta, and they have taken a beta and put
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: it on otherwise very healthy pond snails. I have no
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: idea why they chose, like why they thought the pond
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: snail was a good candidate to begin with.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: Terrible lobbying group.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: Maybe that's what it is. But they put this a
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: beta on these healthy ponds snails and within twenty four
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: hours they show evidence that they have harmed their memory basically,
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: but the finding is that they haven't found any damage
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: to the brain tissue, like no cell loss, no brain
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: tissue damage at all. So basically what they have sort
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: of you know the result of all that is that
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: ABTA by itself can trigger the memory loss and it's
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: not from like damage to the brain or like a deterioration.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Of the brain or the platte build up, right.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. They think it's like a specific pathway for
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: memory that's being damaged and the brain itself. Thank you
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: pond snails, I know it's amazing.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: I also saw it goes the other way too, that
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: the common garden snails mucus has been found to be
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: bioactive as an anti inflammatory, antioxidant and anti apoptic, which
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: means it prevents cell death. Oh wow, so they think
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: that they are figuring out how to turn that into
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: a drug to treat Alzheimer's. So snails are just coming
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: at us with the one two punch to battle Alzheimer's disease.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, God blessed love it.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: Speaking of God bless them, if you're subscribe to the
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: West African Yoruba religion, you would say God bless the
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: snail because they're associated with Obatala, the sky Father, as
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: well as the Arisha's collective deities, to whom the land snail,
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: the giant African land snail in particular, is sacred.
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: I gotta read this last thing. This is the only
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: last thing I got. Okay, this Nigerian snail recipe. Yeah,
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: I'm not in to eat snails. They call this congo meat.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: It's got red pepper, habnio's okay, garlic, onion, and then
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: a season with cayenne and ground crayfish.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you lost me at Hobin Euro But it does
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: sound extremely interesting. I would try it. I'd just be like,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: can you leave the hobbin Niro out.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: Too hot, too hot, Yeah, too hot for the hot
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: top Yeah.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: Too hot tv uh huh. So I've got one more thing, chuck,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: let's hear it. There is a weird thing that started
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: popping up at the end of the thirteenth century in
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: northern France. If you look through illuminated manuscripts, meaning manuscripts
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: that have the doodles in the margins and all that,
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: like a map magazine, yeah, you will start to notice
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: there are pictures of nights battling giant snails.
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's so interesting.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: And they It lasted for like one hundred or so years,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: is like a trend. It actually came back again for
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: a little while in the fifteenth century, and no one
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: has any idea what they were trying to say. One
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: of the theories is that it is just hilarious that
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: it was Menu's like kind of comic relief. While you're
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: reading like this kind of heavy text or whatever, you
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: just look over and you're like, that's a night battling
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: a snail, right.
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: Other people say that the snails symbolize something like superhuman
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: strength because they carry their house on their back. I
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: kind of pooh poo that one I like this the
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: comic relief one.
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: And people were just like, hey, this is funny. Look
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: at this. This night's fighting a snail.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this will be good for a laugh, said the
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: medieval monk. Very interesting, I say so too. So if
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: you want to know more about snails, everybody, go forth
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: research them. You could do worse than watching the strange
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: and wonderful world of the Snail Wrangler. And goodbye snails.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: And if you see a snail in your garden, and
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: especially if it's not doing anything to harm things, you
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: just tip your hat to it and say good day, snail.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: You could be as much as five to ten years old.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: That's right, Chuck said, that's right. This means it's time
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: for listener mail.
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to do a correction. I wish we
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: could get this one out sooner because we're going to
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: continue to get emails about the Great isotope ion. My
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: goodness issue, which I didn't know is an issue. This
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: was we had a lot of them. But this is
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: from Nick Lufty, PhD student at UC Irvine, and Nick
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: is getting a PhD in quantum chemistry.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, man, I want to hang out with you Nick.
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: And Nick listens with his wife Dinah, Hey, Dinah, and said,
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: can't wait till we're in town for a show. But
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: if you're at Irvine, I mean Irvine. How far is
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: that from San Francisco. I mean it's in the state
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: of California. So Scott to just be like an hour
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: away exactly.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, everything in California is an hour away.
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: Come see us. Hey, guys, wanted to offer a slight
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: correction about the periodic table. Don't hate me. When you
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: mentioned the different weighted averages being a result of different isotopes,
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: you mentioned that it is the loss or gain of
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: an electron that constitutes the different isotopes. This is actually incorrect.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: What you've defined is an ion, not an isotope. It
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: is the varying number of neutrons that makes up the
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: different flavors of isotopes. This is the thing that makes
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: carbon dating possible. I love that episode. By the way.
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: Last thing, guys, mystry as a whole is a very
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: inaccessible branch of STEM. I hated it. I failed my
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: first che chemistry class in one day. Our professor was
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: out sick, and the chair of the chem department came
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: to sub in and she implored us to get a
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: PhD in chemistry. I said to myself, she must be nuts.
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: Here I am ten years later and I am clearly
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: the one who is nuts. The long and short of
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: this last bit is to never give up on science. Nice,
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: and that again is from Nick. I think it said lufty,
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: but it's actually lutfi.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, like Chipotle chipolte. Yeah, that's right, Thanks a lot, Nick.
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: We'll call him nick L from now on. Yeah, that
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: was a great one. So everybody who wrote in to
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: let us know, we appreciate you for doing that because
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: we like to get things right and that was definitely
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: a slip up and it is something that we needed
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: to correct for sure. So good job Chuck picking that one.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: Well, if you want to get in touch with us
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: and let us know we got something wronger something right,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: or tell someone about yourself or your dog or your
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: pet goat doesn't matter, you can send it via email
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.