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