A specimen of snail in New Zealand has been filmed for the first time laying an egg by the neck, reassuring scientists who try to save this species threatened with molluscs.
“This is the first time that we have seen a layer by the neck,” says Lisa Flanagan, forest ranger in Hokitika, on the west coast of the southern island, quoted Thursday in a press release from the New Zealand Ministry of Conservation.
“We returned it to weigh it and we saw the egg start out of the snail,” she adds.
The Ministry of Conservation has managed a captive population of “Mont Augustus snails” in Hokitika since 2006 in refrigerated containers, threatened by the exploitation of coal in the region.
This operation made it possible to save, according to him, these molluscs from the extinction.
Kath Walker, a scientist attached to the ministry, explains that the hard shells of snails returned to their coupling difficult, so that some of them developed a “genital pore” just below their head.
The “snail of Mount Augustus” then “to get out of its shell to do the work,” she develops.
These “long -term” “long -term” snails can reach the size of a golf ball and their eggs can take “more than a year to hatch”. They feed on earthworms.
In 2011, 800 of these snails died cold inside their air -conditioned containers due to a bad temperature gauge.
Less than 2000 of them currently live in captivity, while a small number has been released in the wild in New Zealand.
