Recently, a woman living on the second floor in Huizhou, Guangdong Province, posted a video on social platforms saying that she forgot to close the window when it was raining, and when she went home, she found two big snails crawling into the kitchen, one of which also climbed into her cup.
Some netizens reminded in the comment area: This snail must not be touched or eaten, and the cup can also be thrown away!
It's not just an ordinary snail, it's an invasive species
Coincidentally, the topic #Guangdong's snails know how to hide from the rain# has recently caused heated discussions.
▲ source network
The reason was that someone posted a video of snails in Guangdong hiding from the rain, in which several snails "hung upside down" under street lamps to hide from the rain. Many netizens in Guangdong commented that after the rainstorm, they had seen this kind of snails, and they often appeared on the road or in the grass.
According to the popular science of the official account of the Guangzhou Health Commission, in fact, this is not an ordinary snail, nor is it a "local" snail in Guangdong, this is a brown cloud agate snail. It is commonly called the "African giant snail", one of the first 16 invasive alien species on the continent.
▲Comparison of the body size of the African giant snail and the native snail Image source network
Its home is in East Africa and is the largest snail in the world. This large snail usually likes to hide in cool and damp places, under the roots of grass and trees, damp walls, gutters and other places where fallen leaves rot. But it can't survive in water, so when it rains heavily, low, damp places are prone to flooding, and the water drives them to crawl from hiding to where there is no water, and the most recent time is when they are most active.
The African giant snail is one of the world's top 100 malignant invasive species and has been ravaging many tropical and subtropical regions around the world. On the mainland, they are quietly expanding their "territory" in Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, Hainan and other places.
Are African giant snails edible?
There are about 25,000 species of snails in the world, which are divided into edible and inedible snails, and there are only a few species of snails that can be eaten and farmed on a large scale. The edible snail meat is tender and firm, with a similar texture to snail meat, while the ordinary snail meat is loose and inelastic and may have a fishy smell. The snails that the French eat are not of the same species as our common pest, the snail.
As an invasive alien species, the African giant snail not only causes irreversible damage to the diversity of the ecosystem, but also threatens the diversity of the species and causes serious biological pollution. The African giant snail feeds on the leaves of more than 20 crops, including cucumbers, watermelons, cacti, corn and sugarcane, resulting in reduced or no crop yields. In the population outbreak area, the large amount of excrement produced on ornamental plants such as gardens and flowers and the white slime traces left by crawling seriously affect their ornamental value.
The African giant snail is the intermediate host of Angiostrongyloides cantonensis, if you eat the African giant snail, it is likely to be infected by this parasite, causing human eosinophilic meningitis, this encephalitis mainly causes people to have a sharp headache, accompanied by nausea and vomiting, neck stiffness, limited movement, convulsions and other symptoms, severe cases can lead to paralysis and death.
Don't talk about eating, don't touch it
▲ source network
Don't look at their simple appearance, in fact, it is not an exaggeration to call them "drug kings". It likes to live in places where all kinds of rodents live, and often eats rodent feces by mistake, so it carries a variety of bacteria on its body. Pathogenic bacteria such as Pyoccaria aeruginosa, Proteus hepaticus, and Serratia are not strange in it.
Touching it with your hands can cause dermatitis, leaving your skin swollen and itchy, or even blistered. In more severe cases, it directly invades the immune system and causes symptoms such as fever.
Even if you don't eat it and just touch it with your hands, you can get hit, and if it is detected in time, the meningitis caused by nematodes can be cured by deworming and anti-infection treatment. Once delayed, it can lead to dementia and even death.
Seeing this, some people will think: If I don't eat or touch, then it's fine. But when snails crawl, they may leave behind mucus, which itself carries pathogens, and even in their feces, there are still larvae of Angiostrongylus cantonensis. African giant snail crawling vegetables, fruits, towels, toilet seats...... There is a possibility of residual pathogens.
It is unscientific to step directly to death
▲ Source: CCTV
Experts said that the giant snail itself is not toxic, but it is the intermediate host of many parasites and pathogenic bacteria, such as whipworms, pinworms, nematodes, etc., which can parasitize in the central nervous system or cerebrospinal fluid of the human body to cause meningitis, and there may also be pathogenic residues in the places where it crawls, and it is recommended that the public do not directly contact these large snails. It is also unscientific to step on a large snail and will accelerate the spread of snail eggs.
How to sanitize large snails? Salt sprinkling is a familiar method. Once a large amount of salt is sprinkled on it, the mucus will turn into concentrated salt water, thus forming a high osmotic pressure environment around the fragile skin of the snail, resulting in a large amount of water in the snail's body being "pumped" out, and eventually dehydrated to death. However, in actual operation, people will use a variety of snail killing agents with higher environmental safety and better efficiency to poison African giant snails, such as iron phosphate, aluminum sulfate, tetraacetaldehyde, etc., and generally will be manually captured and killed in large quantities.
Source: Xiaokang Toutiao WeChat public account comprehensive Guangzhou Daily, Guangzhou Health Commission, Nanning Evening News, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily
Editor-in-charge: Zhou Jingtao
Review: Tian Yuan Yuying