Ladies and gentlemen, please click "Follow" in the upper right corner, and you will not miss the wonderful content, so that you can view it at any time.
Text: Vientiane hardcore
Edited by Vientiane hardcore
«——【Preamble】】 ——»
In August 2021, a 26-year-old PhD student in Hong Kong sprinkled some salt on a baby snail, and after struggling several times, the snail quickly became dehydrated and died, leaving only three snail shells in the grass.
This scene was seen by a passerby citizen who asked him why he did it, he said that it was to eliminate pests, and the citizen was very dissatisfied after hearing it, and casually took a video and uploaded it to the Internet, and condemned it.
On the same day, the Hong Kong doctor who sprinkled salt on snails was arrested on charges of animal cruelty.
Snails are a creature found in almost every corner of the globe and are a very invasive pest that eats crops and even reinforced concrete buildings.
Are a snail's teeth so powerful? How can it be so destructive when it can't climb 10 meters in an hour?
Since snails turn into water when they encounter salt, which is a powerful measure to eliminate snails, why is there a snail flood?
«【Snail meets salted water·】»
Snails are a very common small animal, and sometimes after the rain, they come out of which horn they don't know to crawl on, crawl on rocks, and gnaw on green leaves.
These little snails didn't pop up overnight, they have very hidden habitats.
When they are not visible, they live in a damp and dark environment, and they only come out at night when the temperature drops, and the sunlight is very deadly for them.
After the rain, the air is fresh, and the plants will also be eroded by the rain for a long time, and there will be a certain amount of decay, which is the favorite smell of the snail, and it will take this opportunity to come out to feed.
But we often see snail shells lying empty above the branches and leaves within a few days after the rain.
So where did the snail go, did it play a trick "golden cicada shelling"?
Eighty percent of their bodies are made up of water, and when the sun shines on them, they are dried out of the sun, leaving them with an empty shell to serve as their grave.
However, salt is also fatal to snails, just as people need to replenish a lot of water to reduce the salt concentration of their bodies after eating very salty vegetables, and the same is true for snails.
The snail itself also needs a certain amount of salt in its body, after all, salt is an ingredient that most organisms must supplement.
Some antelopes, deer, etc. will regularly lick the salt precipitated from the surface of the stone, while the salt content in the body of snails is very low, only three percent of the salt concentration, too much salt will cause them to dehydrate and die.
When salt is sprinkled on the soft body of the snail, these salts will quickly penetrate into their body, and the water in the snail's body will be "regurgitated", and it will begin to secrete a large amount of water to the body surface, gradually becoming dehydrated.
At this time, their bodies, which are supported by water, will shrink dramatically, and more water will melt around them, and then the snails will "melt".
It actually just turns into tiny dried snails, making people ignore its presence, but salt does kill snails.
In that case, why not use salt to treat snails?
Salt is indeed a very lethal substance for snails, but snails often haunt farmland and other land, although salt can kill snails, but it can also harm other organisms in the soil, and it will also have an impact on soil quality.
If this is done for a long time, the soil will be washed away by rainwater, and the salt will flow down the rivers and lakes, threatening the organisms in the water and causing damage to the ecological balance.
Therefore, using salt to treat snails is not the best policy.
«【Snail Battle·】»
How aggressive are the snails? It depends on the African giant snail.
In July 2022, Florida was hit by a large-scale African giant snail invasion, which is the third large-scale African giant snail eradication operation in the United States, and tens of millions of dollars have been invested.
The African giant snail is a relatively large land-dwelling snail, native to East Africa, with a body length ranging from 7 to 20 centimeters and a weight of about one catty.
It is social and will forage at night, but it is much more lethal than a snail the size of a fingernail.
It is very destructive and eats a lot, eating a lot of crops in the fields, trees on both sides of the streets, and eating garbage and even the corpses of its companions when it is hungry.
They also have an extremely powerful digestive system, which can be digested by hard cement.
It is said that the African giant snail could not reach the Americas, but it could not stand its beautiful appearance and had a certain ornamental value, so it was introduced to the United States as a pet, and it has been out of control since then.
In addition, some seafaring transportation or cargo circulation is also the main way of transmission of African giant snails.
In China's Fujian and Guangdong regions, the African giant snail is also a well-known invasive species.
Snails are mostly hermaphrodites, and the African giant snail is no exception, but they all need to be allomated, and in southern China, it is everywhere from April to November every year.
And its reproductive ability is very strong, it can reproduce 4 times a year, it can lay more than 1,000 eggs a year, and several hatches are successful within half a month, and these cubs can have the ability to reproduce in about half a year.
The long-lived African giant snail can live up to nine years, generally around six years.
The African giant snail has strong fecundity, a short lifespan, and great destructiveness, and has become one of the "blacklists" of invasions by many countries.
But it also has the most lethal point, these snails carry germs, people may be infected with diseases when they touch it, and it is impossible to solve it by eating.
In front of this kind of big snail, no matter how much you can eat, no matter how edible the "foodies" have to retreat, compared to the danger of the African giant snail, there is a snail that has been successfully served on the table and has become a famous French dish.
«【French Baked Snails·】»
French baked snails is a famous dish developed in France, and they need to consume hundreds of millions of snails every year because of this dish.
The snails used in this dish are Burgundy snails, which are the best among snails, and there are two other edible snails: the large speckled snail and the white line snail.
The discovery of the Burgundy snail was also related to the Emperor of France, and during another meeting they dined at a Burgundy restaurant, where the chef took the snail to make up the number due to lack of ingredients.
As a result, everyone experienced this taste, and there was a burgundy snail that was later highly sought-after.
However, Burgundy snails have relatively high requirements for the growth environment, and the number of wild ones is relatively limited, so it is difficult to breed them artificially.
But its meat is delicious, reviving the taste buds of a large number of French people, and gradually, its value has also been raised, and for a time, the French used to eat Burgundy snail feast as a status symbol.
Although the African giant snail is rejected by many countries, the Burgundy snail is a popular world delicacy.
The snail is not useless, it is all shortcomings, in addition to being edible, its mucus is also very medical.
Snail walking mainly relies on secreting mucus to promote action, but under the research of scientists, it also has certain medical and cosmetic effects, and indeed snails can not be disguised.
Reference:
Observer.com, "Hong Kong Doctor Arrested for "Cruelty to Animals" After Pouring Salt on 3 Snails to Cause Their Deaths", 2021-8-17
"One of the Oldest Animals!", an article on Reading the "Snail" You Don't Know: Its Mucus Extract Can Still Be Beautiful?", 2023-6-14
Guangming.com, "Florida Encounters African Snail Attack", 2022-7-26
CCTV News, "African Giant Snail "Invasion": Touching and Eating May Be Infected with Disease", 2016-5-23