Among humans, the odds of being left-handed are about 1 in 10. However, the relative rarity of human lefties pales in comparison to the equivalent among snails. The vast majority of common garden snails have shells that coil to the right, yet one in approximately 40,000 has a shell that coils to the left.
Last month, one of these unusual left-coiling snails was spotted by Giselle Clarkson, an author and illustrator who lives in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand’s North Island. A keen gardener who was used to seeing right-coiling snails, she immediately noticed that something was different about this particular snail. She named the snail Ned after Ned Flanders, Homer Simpson’s left-handed neighbor.
Though apparently healthy and normal in all other ways, Ned faces one significant challenge: finding a mate. Left-spiraling snails have reproductive organs that are on the opposite side of the body compared to right-spiraling snails, meaning that they can only breed with other “lefties.” This romantic plight inspired Clarkson to reach out to New Zealand Geographic magazine, which has since organized a national campaign to find another left-coiling snail to mate with Ned.
A similar situation unfolded in the UK in 2016, when a nationwide search for a mate for a left-coiling snail named Jeremy resulted in two additional lefties being found – though these snails turned out to prefer each other to Jeremy.
The luck of the spiral:
- Of course, some might argue that Ned doesn’t need a mate, given that common garden snails (Cornu aspersum) are not a native species in New Zealand.
- Regardless of how their shells spiral, all snails are hermaphrodites, with both male and female reproductive organs. Those organs happen to be in the snail’s neck.
- Right-coiling garden snails have dextral shells, while left-coiling snails have sinistral shells.
