Fu Shou Luo, at first when we heard this name, blessed and shou, we will definitely think that this is a good thing. Just like opium, it has a very nice nickname, called Fushou cream. However, many things, good names do not mean that they are good, such as the Fushou snail we are going to talk about today. It's almost useless except for its good name, and it's even terrible.
So the question is, how terrible is the Fushou snail? The maximum weight can exceed 1.2 pounds, with a variety of deadly parasites. What's going on? Fushou snail originated in South America, formerly known as golden apple snail. Because it has the respiratory function of lungs and gills, its environmental adaptability is extremely strong, not only can it survive in the water, but also can lurk on land for about 6 months.
In addition, Fushou snails also have strong reproductive ability. It can lay 6 to 8 clutches of eggs at a time, and can lay 20 to 30 clutches of eggs a year, and the number of eggs per clutch is between 10 and 500. These eggs can hatch in about 2 weeks, and the hatched pups can mate and lay eggs in about 2 months. A female Fushou snail can breed 2 generations per year.
In our words, a young Fushou snail can become a grandparent within 1 year. Its reproductive period can last up to 3 years and its lifespan is up to 4 years. Because of this, a mother's Fushou snail can reproduce more than 300,000 descendants in 1 year. In addition, its diet is extremely mixed, mainly based on plants, such as rice, lotus root, etc., but also loves to eat animal carrion, meat and vegetarian.
In the absence of enough food, Fushou snails even eat cement blocks. If there is no food all the time, it will temporarily enter a dormant period to save its own physical energy and maximize its own survival. Fushou snails generally weigh more than 70g; if grown in the warm south for 1 year, the average individual can reach about 4 pairs. If it grows for several years, its maximum weight can exceed 1.2 pounds.
Extremely strong reproductive ability, extremely omnivorous eating habits, coupled with oversized weight, is the terrible side of Fushou snail. Because it will bring damage to the entire crop, and even the ecological environment. It can be said that the life of Fushou Snail is the life of harming human beings. Both juvenile snails and adult snails will bite into food crops such as rice, causing food production to decrease, and its manure will also cause serious pollution to water bodies.
In the waters where a large number of Fushou snails survive, the quality of the water body will decline, which will have a negative impact on other aquatic organisms, and competition with native species will lead to a decrease in local freshwater organisms, or even extinction, and many countries are deeply affected. For example, in the United States, the Fushou snail was introduced as an aquarium breeder, but it was abandoned because it breeded too quickly, so it spread to various places and brought significant losses to the United States.
Of course, Fushou snails have also brought serious disasters to China. In 1979, a female overseas Chinese first introduced Fushou snails to Taiwan Province, called Jinbao snail promotion, when a female Fushou snail could sell for 800 Taiwan dollars. Later, due to its poor taste and parasites, it was not liked by Taiwanese, so it was discarded in large quantities in waterways, eventually triggering a large invasion of species, losing NT$5.1 billion.
Since then, Fushou snail has been called "Xiaoshou snail" by Taiwanese. In 1981, Fushou snail was introduced to Guangdong, Xiamen and other places as a farmed food. Of course, it was also because it was not delicious and was abandoned in large quantities, resulting in an uncontrollable outbreak, and soon flooded to the southern provinces. In addition, in Japan, Thailand, the Philippines and other countries, there have also been fushou snail invasions, causing serious losses to the local area.
In Europe, the snail is ranked 40th among the 100 worst invasive species. In addition, the most terrible thing about Fushou snail is not its damage to agriculture and ecology, but it will bring serious diseases to the human body, because it generally carries deadly parasites, such as Guangzhou tube roundworm. An adult Fushou snail contains as few as a thousand and as many as five or six thousand nematodes in its body.
If the nematodes are not killed when cooking, the nematodes are easy to invade the human body, and serious damage to nerve tissue, leading to dementia and even death. In the summer of 2006, 87 diners in Beijing fell ill and were hospitalized after eating uncooked Fushou snails at a restaurant, resulting in facial paralysis in some and inability to close their eyes. The root cause of the disease of diners is the Guangzhou tube roundworm carried in the body of Fushou snail.
Thankfully, these diners survived. Since then, many places across the country have listed Fushou snails as a banned ingredient. Of course, there are also some black-hearted merchants who will still sell the Fushou snail packaging cost snail to customers, hoping that customers will carefully identify it when eating. Today, Fushou snails have become chicken, duck, goose, and turtle food in China. But in Southeast Asia, there are still people who eat this kind of thing. (Please pay more attention to it, welcome to read my other articles!) ）