Until recently, I’d never given snail sex any thought whatsoever. To be honest, in any normal life that would still be true but the strange and abnormal life of a sprog-ette scientist means that I have not only thought about snail sex in the abstract, but I am now at least a little bit au fait with the practicalities of it.
Now before anyone shouts at me that there are shells amongst this motley selection that are not snails at all, I’m sure that is true – in fact, I reckon at least one of these is a whelk. I don’t even know whether a whelk is just another type of snail. These are some of the randomly collected shells that have been gathered from the beach on our dog-walking trips, I claim no special knowedge about anything here.
One of the main things biologists are concerned with is sex. You know – in the sense of “You and me, baby, ain't nothin' but mammals, So let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel” Well, let’s face it, it’s important because who we choose to reproduce with is fundamental to the diversification of individuals into different species.
I now know that sex is a minefield (if I didn’t already). It’s not just a case of “oh ok you look good to me let’s “do it like…”. For example, two male beetles that look the same can have such radically different genitalia that they can’t both have sex with the same female. Male dragonflies have such complicated genitalia that they can remove the sperm of other dragonflies from the female they are mating with. Bedbugs have given up on traditional sex, the male choosing instead to make a hole in the female’s abdomen and inject sperm directly into the body cavity. Female insects can decide the male they’ve just copulated with isn’t good enough genetically and expel their sperm without using it. There are all sorts of tricks and strategies for making sure the “right choice” is made including possibly giving up on sex all-together and finding another way of generating offspring .
All of that aside, consider the plight of the humble snail. It’s critical for a snail to have its shell in the right orientation – notice that the ones above all go in a clockwise direction from the centre of the coil to the outside. That’s the normal state of affairs for snails but every now and again, one comes along and is coiled anti-clockwise. When that happens, the snail is destined for a sad and extremely lonely life…well, without a minor miracle, a completely celibate one. You see if your shell is on the wrong way around, it’s completely impossible to mate with a “normal” snail so your only chance of getting any sex is if you have the extremely lucky break of finding another anti-clockwise snail.
None of this happens randomly – or at least, very little of it does – it’s all to do with genetics. While I’m pretty sure that snails don’t give a lot of thought to their genetic make-up, at least not in the way that we might, but the poor ones blighted with an anti-clockwise coil probably do give a thought to why they can’t do what they are programmed to do. So, next time you see a snail, take a peek and see if it’s one of the lucky ones or one of the unlucky ones.
What occurs to me is had I written this on 1st April, you'd have thought it was an April Fool now wouldn't you?
