George the
Snail, Believed to Be the Last of His Species, Dies at 14 in Hawaii
By Julia Jacobs
Jan. 10, 2019
It is said that artists are never fully
appreciated until they die. The same goes for snails, apparently.
For roughly a decade, the land snail species
Achatinella apexfulva, which used to be plentiful on the Hawaiian island of
Oahu, was believed to be down to a single survivor. His name was George, and he
lived his last days alone in a terrarium in Kailua, Hawaii, alongside an ample
supply of fungi (a food his ancestors liked to scrape off leaves in the wild).
But on Jan. 1, George died, according to Hawaii’s
Department of Land and Natural Resources. He lived to about age 14 — a good, long
life for a snail of his kind, experts say. His death was symbolic of a steep
decline in the population of land snails, once a fantastically diverse group of
mollusks in Hawaii, as well as the rapid extinction of species around the
world.
Scientists estimate that dozens
of species go extinct each day, but few receive this kind of news media
attention on their way out. Naming George probably boosted his standing, said
Michael G. Hadfield, who founded a program meant to protect snail populations
in Hawaii.
“You anthropomorphize it and people pay
attention,” Dr. Hadfield said.
The snail’s caretakers named him George after
the only survivor of the Pinta Island tortoises of the Galápagos. George the tortoise,
known as Lonesome George, died in 2012.
George the snail was born in the early 2000s
to parents that had been captured in the mountains in an effort to protect them
from predators.
At first, George had about 20 contemporaries, but they
all died relatively suddenly, said David R. Sischo, who now directs the
state-run Snail Extinction Prevention Program. Staff members at the program
suspected that the snails died because of a pathogen, Dr. Sischo said, but
George somehow survived.
“Against all odds, he still persisted,” he said.
Although George’s death was not unexpected, the team
at the laboratory in Kailua felt the loss.
“He’s been a constant for a really long time,” Dr.
Sischo said. “If anything good comes out of this extinction, it will be the
recognition that we have a lot to lose, and we don’t have a lot of time.”
At one point, there were more than 750 species of land
snails identified on the Hawaiian Islands. George’s species was the first to be
described in Western scientific literature: When the British explorer Captain
George Dixon visited Oahu in the 1780s, he was given a lei made with some of
the snails’ shells, according to the Department of Land and Natural Resources.
But estimates suggest that more than half of those
species are already extinct, Dr. Sischo said.
The land snails have been affected most by invasive
predators like rats and the rosy wolfsnail, which eats other snails. They have
also faced habitat destruction and the effects of climate change; drier
conditions have reduced the inhabitable land on the islands, Dr. Sischo said.
Documents from the 19th century described land snails
as hanging off plants like clusters of grapes, said Dr. Hadfield, who is now a
professor emeritus of biology at the University of Hawaii. In the 1980s, Dr.
Hadfield more often saw them lying dead on the ground.
After the plight of the land snails gained some
attention, the entire Achatinella genus was listed as endangered in 1981. Dr.
Hadfield said the genus might have gotten preferential treatment because its
snails are often the most striking to behold.
“There are bright gold ones, there are pure white
ones, there are unearthly greens,” he said. “Most of us feel that these snails,
outside of where they’re being protected, probably won’t last much longer.”
George himself was a thumbnail-size whorl of dark
brown and tan. He looked like a swirled scoop of mocha fudge.
Although his caretakers use “he” to describe George,
the snail is actually a hermaphrodite. And unfortunately for his species, Dr.
Sischo says, he could not produce offspring without a mate.
Right now, George’s body is submerged in a container
of alcohol, and his shell is destined for a local museum. But there is a
strange sliver of hope for his future.
In 2017, researchers removed a two-millimeter piece of
his foot to preserve in a deep-freeze container, according to the Department of
Land and Natural Resources. The hope was that someday soon, scientists will
develop the technology to clone a snail.
.
..
.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.