By RINTARO SAKURAI/ Staff Writer
January 21, 2024 at 07:00 JST
The Karaftohelix gainesi land snail has a shell diameter of 3.5 to 4 centimeters. (Provided by Yuta Morii)
A snail species nearly endemic to Hokkaido hits back at predators and flees as best as a snail can, a study showed.
The behavior of Karaftohelix gainesi is extremely rare among land snails, according to the research team, consisting of Yuta Morii, a Kyoto University assistant professor of evolutionary ecology, and students at Hokkaido Sapporo Keisei High School.
Most land snail species retreat into their shells for protection when attacked by an external enemy.
But the shells of K. gainesi lack enough coils for the mollusks to totally conceal themselves from their enemies, particularly carabid beetles.
In 2016, Morii found that K. gainesi swing their shells against carabid beetles. He hypothesized that the snails climbed up trees and plants to avoid the beetles, which cannot fly.
The high school students found another defense mechanism of the snails: fleeing.
On more than 110 occasions, the students measured the speeds at which K. gainesi and Karaftohelix editha, another land snail species endemic to Hokkaido, moved along a rod with a diameter of one centimeter.
They also used a fine needle to poke at the back side of the K. gainesi snails’ feet to mimic an attack from a carabid beetle, and then looked for changes in speed.
The experiments showed that K. gainesi moved 1.2-1.4 times faster than K. editha at normal times when no predators were around.
When “attacked,” K. gainesi moved up the rod at speeds of 1.27-1.35 millimeters per second, or 1.2-1.3 times faster than usual.
That pace can be considered “fleeing speed” for the snails, according to the team.
“K. gainesi appear to counter predators and flee for their lives in their own, snailish manner,” Morii said. “Such a bold behavior has never been known in land snails before. Our finding provides precious clues to the questions of species differentiation and individuality in animals.”
The research results were published in an international science journal. Six of the Hokkaido Sapporo Keisei High School science club members who took part in the experiments in their after-school hours appear in the list of the article’s authors.
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