Post by tenebricosa on May 23, 2017 20:36:57 GMT
How does one become and accidental snail keeper you ask? Well, let me tell you the story of a very exceptionnal snail that I stumbled upon.
A few weeks ago, I was walking to my class' building, it was early morning and quite damp so there was a lot of mollusks out and I was being cautious as to not walk on one.
And I almost missed this tiny snail that was crawling along the stairs, but I backtracked, thinking something was definetely peculiar about it: it only had one eyestalk.
Of course I had to take him with me to show it to the other students and my zoology professor. A friend gave me a small recipient in which I carried it all day long, stopping every-so-often to double check that I wasn't hallucinating and that it did have only one eyestalk, not two that were very close together. I showed it to pretty much everyone that day, and the reactions ranged from 'woah that's so awesome!' to 'urk, a snail....what could be special about it?....'
A week or so later, I got in contact with my university's malacologist, who was pretty extatic about my discovery, and could only trace something similar back to Hungary in 1930. We also discovered together that Cosmo not only had two fused eyestalks.... He even had 3 eyes!
He is currently writing an article to be published in a national malacology review, and told me the snail might even interest Paris' Natural Museum. This is a really exciting adventure and I can't wait until my pictures and article get published! This also means I don't want to post good-quality public pictures before they are officially published, but I've put a picture of Cosmo as my avatar in which you can clearly see what he looks like.
The little guy's a Monachoides incarnatus, a tiny and cute species that is apparently quite common around my university but that I had never seen before. After a few weeks I started searching for a mate for Cosmo, so that I could check if his weird appearance could be genetically transmittable, but all I found was a juvenile of the species, which I kept and is named Poof.
And then, last week, I realised it was useless to look for a mate, as Cosmo laid eggs!
This discovery sparked an interest in snails that I always had since I was a child but that I put on the side because snails are always seen as a childish interest and I thought I was too grown up to keep them. So now, not only do I have Cosmo and Poof, I also have taken in a Cepea nemoralis, Wanda, and a Cepea hortensis (I think), named Rosy (their shell is really pink, and I feel like even their flesh has pink undertones? They're really pretty).
They're currently living in way too small homemade terrariums, but I'm setting them a bioactive terrarium on Thursday, I'll send pictures!
A few weeks ago, I was walking to my class' building, it was early morning and quite damp so there was a lot of mollusks out and I was being cautious as to not walk on one.
And I almost missed this tiny snail that was crawling along the stairs, but I backtracked, thinking something was definetely peculiar about it: it only had one eyestalk.
Of course I had to take him with me to show it to the other students and my zoology professor. A friend gave me a small recipient in which I carried it all day long, stopping every-so-often to double check that I wasn't hallucinating and that it did have only one eyestalk, not two that were very close together. I showed it to pretty much everyone that day, and the reactions ranged from 'woah that's so awesome!' to 'urk, a snail....what could be special about it?....'
A week or so later, I got in contact with my university's malacologist, who was pretty extatic about my discovery, and could only trace something similar back to Hungary in 1930. We also discovered together that Cosmo not only had two fused eyestalks.... He even had 3 eyes!
He is currently writing an article to be published in a national malacology review, and told me the snail might even interest Paris' Natural Museum. This is a really exciting adventure and I can't wait until my pictures and article get published! This also means I don't want to post good-quality public pictures before they are officially published, but I've put a picture of Cosmo as my avatar in which you can clearly see what he looks like.
The little guy's a Monachoides incarnatus, a tiny and cute species that is apparently quite common around my university but that I had never seen before. After a few weeks I started searching for a mate for Cosmo, so that I could check if his weird appearance could be genetically transmittable, but all I found was a juvenile of the species, which I kept and is named Poof.
And then, last week, I realised it was useless to look for a mate, as Cosmo laid eggs!
This discovery sparked an interest in snails that I always had since I was a child but that I put on the side because snails are always seen as a childish interest and I thought I was too grown up to keep them. So now, not only do I have Cosmo and Poof, I also have taken in a Cepea nemoralis, Wanda, and a Cepea hortensis (I think), named Rosy (their shell is really pink, and I feel like even their flesh has pink undertones? They're really pretty).
They're currently living in way too small homemade terrariums, but I'm setting them a bioactive terrarium on Thursday, I'll send pictures!
