Wellington, New Zealand – The strange reproductive habits of a great carnivore New Zealand The snails once were wrapped in mystery. Now, the snail images placing an egg of his neck have been captured for the first time, the country’s conservation agency said Wednesday.
What looks like a small chicken egg is emerging from an opening under the head of the Powelliphanta Augusta snail, a threatened endemic species of New Zealand.
The video was taken in an installation on the west coast of the South Island, where the conservation rangers tried to save the species of extinction They have taken care of a town of snails in refrigerated containers for almost two decades.
The conditions in the containers mimic the alpine climate in its only old habitat, a remote mountain for which they were named, on the west coast of the South Island, which has been wrapped by mining.
Lisa Flanagan del Conservation Departmentwho has worked with creatures for 12 years, said the species still has surprises.
“It is remarkable that in all the time we have spent taking care of the snails, this is the first time we have seen an egg,” he said in a statement.
Like other snails, Powelliphanta Augusta are hermaphrodites, which explains how creatures can reproduce when they are locked in a hard peel. The invertebrate uses a genital pore on the right side of his body, just below the head, to simultaneously exchange sperm with another snail, which is stored until each one creates an egg.
Each snail takes eight years to reach sexual maturity, after which puts about five eggs a year. The egg can take more than a year to hatch.
“Some of our captive snails are between 25 and 30 years old,” said Flanagan. “They are polar opposites to the snail of the garden of pests that we present to New Zealand, which is like a herb, with thousands of descendants every year and a short life.”
The dozens of species and subspecies of the Powelliphanta snails are only found in New Zealand, mainly in steep forest and grassland environments where they are threatened by the loss of habitat.
They are carnivores that sip the earthworms such as noodles, and are some of the largest snails in the world, with large and distinctive shells in a variety of rich earth colors and swirl patterns.
The Powelliphanta Augusta was the center of the legal and public uproar procedures in the early 2000s, when the plans of an energy company to extract coal threatened to destroy the habitat of the snails.
Some 4,000 were removed from the site and relocated, while 2,000 more were lodged in cold storage in the city of Hokitika on the west coast of Hokitika to guarantee the preservation of the species, which is slow to reproduce and does not adapt well to the new habitats.
In 2011, about 800 of the snails accidentally died in a refrigerator of the conservation department with a defective temperature control.
But the slow survival of the species continues: in March of this year, there were almost 1,900 snails and almost 2,200 eggs in captivity, said the conservation agency.
