How Snails Work

Guarantee Human. I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is Icarol. This podcast is all about going deeper

“with the women shaping culture right now.”

Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking about the pressure, the expectations, and the real work behind it all.

As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated.

So you have to work extra hard in a way that doesn't compromise who you are in your integrity. You know, I like to say I was kind of like the silent ninja. Listen to it, girl, with Bailey Taylor on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In 2023, Bachelor Star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctor this particular test twice in silence, correct? I doctor the test once.

It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Break a recipe and I guarantee any. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is LoveTrap.

Laura, Scott State Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to LoveTrap podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Joe Interestine, host of the spirit daughter podcast,

where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today, I'm talking with my dear friend, Crystal Williams.

“It can change you in the best way possible.”

Dance with the change, dance with the breakdowns, the embodiment of Pisces intuition, with Capricorn power moves. Just so I'm like delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the spirit daughter podcast, starting on February 24th on the I Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hey everybody, if you've ever stepped on a snail and didn't feel particularly bad about it, then you should probably prepare for that to change after listening to this episode. It turns out that snails aren't just mucusy,

there are precious member of your garden club too. So go find a snail, share an earbud with them, so you can listen to this episode together. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio.

Hey and welcome to this slow cast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. We're just inching along, doing things our own way our own speed, our own time, leaving a trail of mucus behind us as we do.

Wow, an inching along, uh, 0.5 inches per second.

Yeah, it's like that one guy said, life is a highway. I want to ride it all night long, covering only an inch. Was that the parenthetical of that title? Yeah, it was, it was a,

yeah, to read between the lines. Yeah, exactly. What a great song. Or play backwards. That song that you think is great.

Yeah, I do. I do. If you take away all the bit, it's actually a great song. It's very upbeat. And then enthusiastic and very,

um, this is a good song. Who was that? I don't remember.

“I think that might have been as only song.”

Although now I've said that, I'm sure he's a huge sensation in Canada or something and now everybody's getting mad at us. Yeah, that happens a lot. We'll find out.

But anyway, whoever you are out there who made this song for listening, Breton Cap off to you. That's right. Chuck, I picked this one.

He's Canadian by the way. I knew it, dude. I knew it. He said always happened. I don't know.

I don't know. What's his name? Tom Carcran. I wanted to see Tom, but I wanted to see Tom Brocott. And I was like, I'm not even going to bring that up.

And you know what? He's in the Canadian. He's called with fame. Oh my God. All right. So, so much for that.

Okay. And anyway, hats off Tom Carcran. I think is what I was trying to say. So we're doing an episode on snails,

which I'm kind of psyched about. Our new good friend Allison helped us with this one.

And believe this is our second one.

She's doing great. Yeah, was this a listener recommendation? No, this was a Josh recommendation. Okay. I didn't know if this was, you know,

we did some stuff recently with kids in the classroom, like little virtual appearance appearances for our book. Stuff kids should know. And I know we got a lot of ideas. And just for some reason I thought

Snails might have been one of those. Not a single one of those kids came up with the idea of snails. It was really sad. Kids these days. And I even know what snails are.

Snails, that was my pick. And I'm not sure where it came from.

But I did.

“Because this is one of those things where,”

I mean, snails are everywhere.

Everyone knows what a snail is. Like, it's just a part of living on earth. You know about snails. And yet, what Allison turned up, and I wasn't aware of when I selected this,

there's actually a bit of a girth of information, academic information on snail specifically. And then a lot of what we think we know about them is actually just like old yarns that gardeners have come up with over the years.

So I love topics like that. And actually, from researching this, I've come to actually really appreciate snails. Like, I actually kind of think they're cute now, just from watching them in some videos.

Well, I looked up a picture of the, and we'll talk about these in a little more detail later, but that giant African snail. Mm-hmm.

And there was one picture of a woman holding one of these things.

Yeah. And I swear it looked like a bunny rabbit with a turtle chill. Weird, no, I've not seen that picture. It looked like a bunny.

I mean, it's a snail clearly. It didn't look that much like a bunny. Right. I wasn't like, what in the world? Maybe it was eating a bunny.

Is that what it was? I don't think so. But you were right. Allison was keen to point out that

“malecology, which is someone who studies malice,”

is just, I guess there's just not a ton of those people out there. So they're just tend to be more people studying, you know, furier, cuter things than snails, I guess. Right, exactly. And even if you do have a lot of malecologists,

they're studying malec-- and snails just make a part of one class of a larger file of malaska. They're part of gastropota. And it's not just snails in gastropota.

We're talking slugs, sea slugs, conks, welks, limits.

Basically all snail-like creatures

are in the gastropota class. So they're gastropotes? Yeah. Are gastropods? I didn't know how it was pronounced.

It's got to be gastropod, right? I mean, I think it's gastropod, but would it be gastropota? No. There's one of those weird things.

It just flips when you shorten it. It's that second thing. Okay. Great. So I said also Chuck,

just living on earth, you're aware of snails, and there's a reason for that. They've been around for a really, really long time. They are everywhere, and even if you're walking around Antarctica,

and you look down on the ground, you might see a snail waving up to you, wearing a parka. Yeah. And even if snails as we will find out, love moisture,

even if you're in the desert, even if you're in Arizona, living there in Phoenix, you might see a snail, because they're still random water here and there.

Yeah, plus also, some of them have evolved to really hang on to their water better than other times, so they can survive in the desert. It's just nuts. They're everywhere.

As a matter of fact, they think that there's about 150,000 gastropods species in total.

“Remember that includes slugs and all that stuff.”

But they think snail species are between 30,000 and 35,000. And I mean, you know, we think of snails as typically, like the little garden snail, maybe the Escar Ghost snail. I think that's the Roman snail if I'm not mistaken. But there are all sorts of snails.

You mentioned that the giant African lands snail, those things get, I saw that they get to be about the size of a human fist or bigger. That's a big snail. But on the other end,

there's another type of snail that they recently discovered. And I think Vietnam and Cambodia on the walls of caves. And they can fit inside like a grain of sand. They're that small. But if you look at them under a microscope,

they are very clearly snails. Yeah. I saw about 500 native species to North America. And we're generally going to be talking about, you know, sort of your average lands snail.

But there are snails that live exclusively in the water under the sea. It would, you know, there's just no way we could talk about all the snails. So we're going to mainly concentrate on the kind that leave that mucusy trail on the sidewalk. Right. Like we could probably get through 34,000 species today,

but definitely not 35,000. That's right. So we're not going to dry. Okay. So the other thing that's kind of like a bummer about snail species is that,

as long as we've been scientifically paying attention to snails, we've recorded more than 400 extinctions of snail species. And there's an Atlantic short documentary.

I think it's called goodbye snails. And it's set in Hawaii where they're experiencing this crazy mass extinction of their native snail species that exist nowhere else in the world. And it's a really kind of a tense little documentary, but the people who are trying to rescue these snail species,

prevent them from extinction are really doing some amazing work over there.

Yeah. There's about a thousand of them that are land snails alone that are endangered right now. So that's, that's a lot of species to be in trouble. So that's, that's no good because as we will see, they can, there can be invasive snails and they can do some harm to the garden,

but they also do a lot of great things for your garden. And for the world. Yeah. Leave the snails alone. Yeah, read them.

I have like once or twice. I'm not crazy about them. No. And they're not, I'm not an escargo fan. I'm a fan of the escargo joke, though.

Right. Which is, uh, look at that escargo. What, is that what it was? A snail painted an ass on the side of his car. That's right.

That's a great elementary school kid joke. Yep. That's wonderful. Uh, I was, um, trying to remember. If I've ever, I feel like I might have tried at one time many, many, many years ago,

because I do remember seeing snails floating in a buttery solution on a plate. Mm-hmm.

“And I think there was a little, uh, tiny tongue.”

Yeah. That's how it was. Yeah. But I really haven't, a very, very faint memory. I did try it. I don't know, under what circumstance it was, but it was a long time ago.

And it's, it's not something I'd really be into now. So you even have like a specialized plate for serving them.

And it basically doubles as like a devil-degg serving plate too.

It's like, you know, got a bunch of depressions in it that the snail sit in. Right. I'd rather have a devil-degg. Uh, you can also eat snail legs. Uh, they call it white caviar.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's, uh, I think it's like 130 bucks for about 1.75 ounces. Well, wow. Well, that's a lot of snail legs now that I think about it.

Yeah. It seems like it. I mean, it looks like it comes a little tin like caviar. Mm-hmm. But, um, although I do love caviar now,

I don't think I would try snail caviar. Okay. Okay. I'll accept that answer. And then, I know talked about a new wish to caviar just past couple of years.

Uh-huh.

“Was it something I ever had until, uh, semi-recently?”

But now you have it at dinner every night. No. And I just, you've heard of avocado toast every morning. I just have caviar toast. But it all over the biggest piece of sour dough again.

But gold flakes on top. Uh, all right. Should we talk about the body of a snail? Yeah. I feel like we kind of have to because there's a lot of misconceptions.

People have about snails, including me, as far as their body goes. Yeah. I mean, we can talk about their shell for a little bit. Uh, they have that. Well, we'll talk about the shell kind of throughout.

It's obviously, um, a protective device. Uh, snail can pull themselves back into that shell. Mm-hmm. And, uh, they can actually, uh, put a little, uh, I think it's called an, uh, epic Graham.

Uh, and that is like, uh, it's like a front door, basically.

It's a temporary front door that they can put on the whole of that shell. So if you ever pick up a snail shell, and it, and it's covered with something. Mm-hmm. That is a temporary front door that a snail uses to keep people like you from poking around into that snail shell.

Yeah. And I saw that some of them have denticles on there, like, like sharp kind of tooth-like projections, so that if a predator tries to come in there after them, they'll get all torn up. Oh, on the epic Graham? Yeah.

It's like those reverse, um, tire damage things. Like a car rental parking lot. It's like that from what I understand. That's pretty cool. And it also keeps them, uh, moist because, uh, what a snail does not want to do is dry out,

because once again, a snail is basically a slug with a helmet on. Right. So I'd like to talk a little bit about the misconceptions of how the snail body is arranged if we can. Let's do it.

Inside that shell is the actual body of the snail. What we see as the head in the, in the tail is actually the head true, but what looks like the tail is actually like the heel of its foot.

“That's what it's moving around on is its foot, right?”

It's single foot. Exactly. And so above our top of that foot is the whole body and all that is encased in the shell. And what's weird is there's one opening that the, uh, would you say covers the opening? Uh, I think it's called an epigram.

I'm sorry. I've been saying epigram. Epigram. Epigram. Epigram.

Okay. Gotcha. So what the epigram covers is called the aperture. And on land snails, there's one aperture. There's one way in, one way out.

And because all of their body is tucked up in the shell, they still got a poop. They still got a breathe. They still have to do all the stuff that requires the outside atmosphere. Um, and so what they've done is they figured out how to double their bodies around so that

their head and their tail, including their anus, are basically right next to one another

at the aperture at the opening of their shell. Yeah. Kind of like on top of their head. And this is something called torsion, uh, which means to twist, you know, heard of something you've heard of torsion before probably.

Yeah. Chubby checker was going to call his dance the torsion.

“And he's like, is this supposed to have the right ring?”

Let's do the torsion. Right. Traveler from the future came back in time. And I'm told him, no, we should, we should call this the twist. Rocked out the high school dance.

And that was history. That's pretty good. Did you think of that beforehand? No. No.

Okay. No. I didn't. I've just gotten that good this late in the year. I love it.

So yeah, that that body basically doubles back 180 degrees on top of itself.

And there's a lot of debate. I mean, should we get into that? They're like the, the, the, the great torsion debate. Yeah. We can at least touch on it.

Sure.

“It's almost impenetrable if you're not a malecologist.”

Yeah. I would say so. So as far as when torsion emerged, they're not exactly sure. Because you can't tell from like a fossil, whether or not a, you know, you can find a fossil of a shell. Mm-hmm.

But the torsion is happening within the shell. So you can't really tell if it's been torsion? Is that even a verb? I don't know. I was going to say torred it.

I didn't look it up though. So I think torred it, right? Let's say torred it. Yeah. I think it's torred it.

So you can't really tell if it's been torred by looking at a fossil. Mm-hmm. And so there's just been a lot of debate. Like obviously this happened for a reason. Uh, no one knows exactly what that was.

And like you mentioned at the beginning, some of the sort of old farmers' tails. One of those is you might hear some some gardening people say, Oh, well, actually, uh, their asymmetry inside that shell provides balance. Mm-hmm. And that's just not true.

No. No, that's definitely not. Um, there's also, uh, one that back in the day when they were all, marine animals, because land snails evolved from marine aquatic snails. Um, that it was a way to keep their, uh, their hindquarters, their tails, all that stuff from being bitten by a predator.

That would be nice. It does make sense. It's probably not it. What the two biggest competing hypothesis are, the rotation hypothesis and the asymmetrical hypothesis.

And the, the rotational hypothesis, the one that's been around since like 1929.

And it basically says that at some point in the past, um,

the, uh, the snail, some snail mutant came along and twisted around during its development. And it became naturally selected because it was advantageous, because it allowed the snail to retract its head faster. Whereas before I would have had to retract the tail and then the head, now it could retract the head because it's all it had to retract.

Um, yeah, but that was just like a spontaneous thing, right?

“That's what they, that's what they think.”

But it's just such a bizarre thing to have happened, especially in a single mutation. Because again, what we're talking about is during the larval development, a snail's body, it, it, it, it, it, it, it moves counterclockwise to 180 degrees. And so it circulatory and nervous system forms a figure eight inside the shell.

It's not all just packed in their straight, it's all over the place. And because of that weird torsion thing, the entire right side of its anatomy, including its organs are just not there. It's all left side organs stuff. It all just got moved over toward the inside of the shell,

because the right side is pressed up against the, the, the shell itself. And it's all because of torsion and they just cannot figure out why that, that would have happened in the past. Really, it could have happened as a, as a, like a mutation that obviously did. But why would it have been naturally selected for for hundreds of millions of years,

which strongly implies that it was like an advantageous mutation? Yeah, I would think so, right? Yeah, so that's kind of like this debate that's going on that, that is, I mean, you really have to understand snail anatomy and evolutionary history to, to go much further in understanding that debate.

That's pretty much what I can glean from the whole thing. Yeah, and I would say hesitate even getting into that debate.

and you want to dive into this hot conversation.

Yeah, I would stare clear.

“Just take a break and have another drink and just relax.”

Yeah. Or maybe it's time for you to go home. Right. Yeah, get a, get a car to take you home or walk or, or whatever. Yeah.

So that's a very careful. Snails, tort, and we're not sure exactly why, but what we do know, the upshot of it is that their body is double back on itself and their, their anus and their head are essentially right next to each other. Yes, exactly.

They also have a mouth, and inside that mouth is something called a radula. It says teeth on it, and it's like, it's kind of like a tongue. And they have, you know, if you look at a snail, and they turn those two little tentacles to look back at you, that's because they have eyes mounted on either one or two pairs of tentacles.

And they can look at you. They can't hear you.

They don't have ears from what I saw snails are basically deaf.

But they can see you. You, they can see you. And depending on the species, there's different types of eyes. Some have very simple eyes where they can detect changes in light and dark, or maybe maybe movement, but there's some kinds of things that have the ability to,

to see you, to focus on you. And because they're on the ends of those stalks, they can retract the eyes themselves in the stalk and then the stalk into the head, and then the head into the shell. And then when they want to see if danger's gone, they can peek one of those stalks out from the shell and look around.

Isn't that cool? That's pretty cool. I love it. And there's also the mantle and the mantle will come up quite a bit.

“And the best I could figure is that mantle is that area around the rim of the shell that connects the foot and the head to the shell itself, right?”

Yeah. And it's also, whatever holds all of our organs and guts in place that membrane is very analogous to the mantle tissue of the snail. Because it holds all the organs in place, but it also does something really important. It's the creats all of the stuff that eventually is built into the shell itself. That's right.

So are we at the shell part do you think? You know what, this is a good, we're 20 minutes in. I think we should take a break because that shell formation is quite a cliffhanger. Okay. And we'll be right back after this.

Hi. This is Joe Winterstein, host of the spirit daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver.

The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. After storyteller and unapologetic aquarium visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives. And I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius

like are misunderstood, a son and Venus in Aquarius in her 7th house. Spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms on different houses and different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it.

If you're navigating your own transformation, or just want a chart side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life. This episode is a must listen. Listen to this viewer daughter podcast,

starting on February 24th on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is Aquar. You may know me from my Aquar series. I've done on the streets of New York over the years.

Well, I've got good news. I am bringing those interviews and many more to this podcast. Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking about the pressure, the expectations, and the real work,

with the women shaping culture right now.

As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated.

“So you have to work extra hard and you have to push the narrative”

in a way that doesn't compromise who you are in your integrity. You know, I like to say I was kind of like the silent ninja. Each week, I have unfiltered conversations with female founders, creatives, and leaders to talk about ambition, visibility, and what it really takes to build something meaningful in the public eye.

Because being in a girl isn't about the spotlight, it's about owning it. I think the negatives need to be discussed, and they need to be told to people who maybe don't do this every day, just so they know what's really going on.

I feel like pulling the curtain back is important. Listen to it girl with Bailey Taylor on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why hasn't a woman formally participated

Think about how many skills they have to develop

at such a young age? What can we learn from all of the new F1 romance novels suddenly popping up every year? He's still smelled of podium champagne and expensive friction. And how did a 2023 event called Waga Getting

change the paddock forever? That day is just seared into my memory. I'm a culture writer and F1 expert Lily Herman, and these are just a few of the questions I'm tackling on no grip. A Formula One culture podcast that dives into the

undurx-floored pockets of the sport. In each episode, a different guest tonight will go deeper into the wacky mishab scandals and sagas, both on the track and far away from it, that have made F1 a delightful,

decadent dumpster fire for more than 75 years. Listen to no grip on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so we promised to talk to you a little bit about the shell. A snail shell is beautiful.

“You should never, ever, ever smash a snail shell or a snail,”

because that's animal cruelty. And it's a terrible thing to do. So just don't do it. All right.

But it is basically, there's a little bit of protein in there,

but it's mainly something called calcium carbonate. And it is, like you said earlier, secreted by that mantle tissue. And it builds up over time. If you look at sort of the center part of that shell,

that's the oldest part of the shell. You can tell a snail's age by how big that shell is. And that's also the hardest part of the shell, because it's been around longer. So they just keep adding material along that outer edge,

little by little as it expands outward. And that is why the outer edge of a snail shell will be much more, you know, sort of breakable than the inside hardware part. That makes sense.

So the oldest part is close to the center. Yeah. Apparently also I didn't realize this. They're born with a tiny shell already attached. They just grow it over time by secreted our starter shell.

Exactly. And that cute. Yeah. They're born like little tiny baby snails, like that pre-formationism theory

from our things we used to believe before the scientific method episode. The right. So I also said check the mantle holds, the mantle tissue holds all the,

“the important guts and stuff like that in place.”

And the way that snails breathe is through the mantle cavity. They have blood vessels in there. But they breathe using kind of like a primitive, I don't want to say long. I think that's kind of a stretch.

But basically they have an opening that it's called,

I've seen it called a long and diagrams. Okay. So I've also seen it called a new, new mastone. And it's essentially a breathing port that they can open

and close using their muscles that takes in a, it takes in air and exhales air. But it's pretty neat. And it's right there next to their head, right there at the aperture where everything else

that needs to be outside is. Yeah. And they can, if you were talking about sea snails, like I said, we're not going to get too into them, but they can have similar body parts in terms of breathing

or they can also have gills kind of up front as well. Yeah.

“So one of the things snails are most famous for”

are, is their mucus, right? Yeah. That is apparently secreted by the foot. And as the foot moves along, it's just a series of muscles that just kind of propel as they ripple,

propel the snail along. But they lay down a trail of mucus that does a lot of different things. For one, it allows the snail to do some spider-man-esque moves, like just crawl right up the side of a building, because it's very strong.

It's glue-like. Yeah. But it can be, it's funny, because it can be glue-like or act as a lubricant. Exactly.

It's just pretty remarkable. Yeah. So, yeah. It also separates the snail from the rest of the world that it's running over.

You know, it's strong like glue, but it also allows the snail to move smoothly, and it also protects the snail's body from sharp things that it might be crawling over, slowly crawling over.

And it also keeps the moisture locked inside. So much so that snail mucus, as we'll see, has been used for millennia as kind of a skin thing. If you have very dry skin, and you can get your hands on snail mucus, it will cure your dry skin.

Yeah. I mean, that's what keeps the, I mean, that and other things is what keeps that snail moist, and so if it's, if it's keeping the snail alive, then imagine what it can do for your crow's feet.

I don't think we said what was actually made up.

“It's enzymes, peptides, proteins, trace minerals,”

and it's, it's pretty remarkable stuff. It's, you know, the tail tail sign, as when you see that stuff on the sidewalk, and just the term snail trail itself, that sort of snaddy, glistening, shiny snail trail,

you know, has become sort of part of the lexicon, to, you know, as a stand-in for other things, at times. So yeah, for sure. So one of the other things that the snail trail, the mucus trail does, is it says,

hey, sailor, come, come this way. Right. Because it's one way that snails find one another to mate, which is surprising that they mate because they're hermaphroditic.

But all snails are, most species of land snails, are equipped with both male and female sex organs, and when they come together to mate, there's no telling who's who or who's doing what, because in the end, both of them often come away with fertilized eggs.

Yeah, I mean, to me, this section is, the most remarkable stuff about snails.

How they reproduce is just amazing.

They are hermaphroditic because, and it just makes sense. If you're moving 0.5 inches per second, you would die at us a species if you, if like a male head to search for a female or the other way around. So they basically just double their chances of finding somebody

within the, you know, ten feet or so that they're, they're wandering around. I mean, they move more than that within a lifetime, obviously. But, you know, if it's that time of year, which is what, like, this is what I'm talking about.

This is what I'm talking about. This is what I'm talking about. This is what I'm talking about. This is what I'm talking about. This is what I'm talking about.

This is what I'm talking about. This is what I'm talking about. This is what I'm talking about. This is what I'm talking about. This is what I'm talking about.

This is what I'm talking about. This is what I'm talking about. This is what I'm talking about. This is what I'm talking about. This is what I'm talking about.

This is what I'm talking about. This is what I'm talking about. This is what I'm talking about. They are really into it while they're going at it. Yeah, I mean, they're, and this is before they're going at it.

This is when they're just sort of like sizing each other up. They're getting their steam. They're touching tentacles. They're biting each other's lips. Mm-hmm.

Things are getting really pretty hot and heavy in there. And then they have something that is amazing. And I don't know if any other animal that has something like this. They have something called a love, what they call a love dart. Mm-hmm.

A love dart only forms after the first mating.

“So you have to have at least a little bit of sexual experience to even form a love dart.”

Sure. They take about a week to form.

And you don't always have to have one to mate because if you've used up your love dart.

And then, you know, within the week, you want to go at it again. You can still do that. It's not necessary for reproduction, but it helps in reproduction. They form in the dart sack. And it's stored in a dart sack.

And if you look at it, it's a little dart. It's got this little sharp harpoon-like tip. And they actually, it says they shoot it, but it doesn't fly through the air. It's more like a, they stab one another with it. Oh, I imagine it.

Like, do. And then just sailing a couple feet and then sprowing. That would be great. It's more like it's stabbing. But apparently it's very imprecise.

This hydraulic pressure builds up as they circle and bite each other's lips. And then they shoot this thing out at each other. And it can, I think about a third of the time. It doesn't even do what it's intended to do, which we'll get to in a sec. But it can pierce organs.

It can go all the way through the head and out the other side. Yeah. So it's, it's really crazy. It's a weird adaptation. Yeah, no, it's super weird.

“And the, I think what's most weird about it to me is there's other animals that do that”

to deliver sperm. Yeah, yeah. That's not what the snails are doing. These love darts deliver other hormones that help protect the sperm as it makes its way to the eggs to fertilize. Yeah.

It's like a really clumsy, superfluous extra step that, like you said, doesn't even, like they, they miss a lot of the time. They still manage to fertilize eggs. It's just a very strange thing that they do. But it's part of this really long, really slimy, courtship mating process that they get involved in.

And then this, the sex itself is like just one rubs its foot against the other foot. And there you go. Right. And they say, who's pregnant? Which, and they go, I don't know.

Maybe both of us. Yeah, both of us. Actually, can't it be both? Yeah. That's what I'm saying.

Okay. Both can walk away with fertilized eggs after this.

And they can lay, I think they can hatch up to 450 eggs per year.

“And when, and that doesn't take very long actually, right?”

In the gestation period, it can be like really short, right? For some species, especially in captivity, it can be 24 hours. Others, it seems like the outside is four weeks. And usually in the wild, it's like two to four weeks for gestation. Yeah.

And once those little guys are born, they, they may immediately start eating the rest of the eggs. Is there first meal? Yeah. It's kind of a bummer, especially because leading up to it. It's so cute.

It's little tiny snail with its little tiny shell is inside its egg and it starts tapping.

It's way out till it cracks through the egg. And then, yeah, it gruesomely eats its siblings very quickly. Sometimes it'll eat smaller siblings that have already hatched, not just the eggs. What I didn't realize though is that some, and that's actually not all snail species. That's once that will eat eggs, but for the most part they'll eat just vegetation.

Yeah. The snail parent will often stay nearby to provide protection for the young snail hatchlings for a little while. Yeah, they hang out for a while, right? Yeah. It did not realize though.

I thought it was pretty cool.

Yeah, they can, they can hang out for up to three months together while the parents are kind of protecting them. And like you said, they're born with that little baby shell and just gets bigger and bigger. Did we talk about how long they can live? No, we didn't. It's pretty spectacular.

Yeah, I mean, in the wild, they can live up to five years, which that shocked me quite frankly. Yeah, really, I feel bad for all the snails you've accidentally stepped on after a rainy evening. You hope at least they were old. Yeah, exactly, like they had their time.

“Yeah, so five years is pretty long time in the wild, I think.”

In captivity, they can live up to 25 years, which is astounding. Yeah, there's a really great little short documentary called the Strange and Wonderful World of the Snail Wranglers on YouTube. And it's about this woman who takes photos of her snail friends in like little miniature settings human settings. It's really cute. And she talks about one of her snail companions that she's been with for like 10 years.

And it's just, I mean, when you think of it like that, like snails are just so they're off doing their own thing. They live in a world far different from ours, even though we share the same geography. It's just a different world. So when you cross paths with one, you're like, hey, alien, and they're probably like, hey, giant alien. And that's it.

The idea that they're there in that same patch, as long as you are in some cases when you're like, if you live at a house for 10 years, a snail might have lived there just as long as you did for the same time. Like you shared that with them that whole time, it's they're not just a anonymous generic animals running around. There are, I mean, anything that lives that long, there's just something more substantial to it than then you would think initially. Are you saying a snail has a soul?

I think it's pretty clear. Yes. All right. So snails are doing their things. I love this account that Allison found. It's a scientist from Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum Natural History that said snails are leaky bags of water that survive on dry land. And it almost sounds like they're saying like they happen to survive because it doesn't seem like a snail was really made for that environment, but they survive anyway.

Because snails really need to stay moist, like a snail drying out, just like a slug means certain death. So even though there are snails in the desert, you're mainly going to find snails in more moist areas. We're going to say that word quite a bit. I apologize. I was going to say unlike humans, moist is a snail's favorite word. There really is. They do live on the ground mainly if they're trust real snails, but they can live in trees.

But they really like it down there on the ground in that sort of moist outer layer of the king plant matter. There are pretty active at night because things can get wetter overnight as we know, like when you wake up with like morning dew and stuff like that. So there's just down there on the ground, sometimes eating meat and other snails and other eggs, but generally what they're doing is eating and munching down on that either decaying plant matter or if you have a garden, they will also munch down on your nice new fresh plants.

Yeah, and as we'll see that they run a file of gardeners for that reason, but just hold your horses gardeners put your rubber mallets away for a second until we get to that part and talk you out of it.

“But in that leaf litter layer, they do a lot of really important stuff.”

And they are in charge of like recycling plant matter decaying stuff. They love decaying or everything. In addition to live plants to they love dead plants.

And that means it's bio-available in the soil for plants to use for other animals to come along and like that like to lick the dirt, that kind of thing.

And also are really important in the food web because calcium is not really easy necessarily to come by in food, at least if you're like a small, like an inverter or a mammal or something like that. If you eat a snail shell, you get a burst of calcium. So that snail shell is really important and then they're also chock full of protein themselves. So they're like a really important part of any food web in the ecosystem that they live in. Yeah, they're also moving stuff around down there. I mean plant matter and that outer layer that just sits and sits isn't great.

But if you've got thousands of snails moving around through it, it's going to help drain it out. It's going to help keep distributing those nutrients.

If there's, you know, it can help move dirt and clay even. It's very important. All that stuff is great and they can actually help pollinate too. Some of them are nighttime pollinators. They get in there with that plant nectar. They eat that stuff and then they poop that out as well. Yeah, pretty crazy. I had no idea that they were pollinators. It just makes me even more important. You know what I mean?

“Totally. So I think Chuck, we take a break and then we come back and talk about why you should leave the snails alone. How about that? Let's do it.”

Hi, this is Joe Winterstein, host of the spirit daughter podcast where we talk about astrology, natal charts and how to step into your most vibrant life.

And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. After storyteller and unapologetic aquarium visionary aquariums is all about freedom loving and different perspectives. And I find a lot of people with strong placements and Aquarius like are misunderstood. A son and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms on different houses and different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it.

If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity and real life, this episode is a must listen. Listen to this viewer daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your podcast. I'm Bailey Taylor and this is it girl. You may know me from my it girl series. I've done on the streets of New York over the years. Well, I've got good news. I am bringing those interviews and many more to this podcast.

Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking about the pressure, the expectations and the real work with the women shaping culture right now.

“As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated. So you have to work extra hard and you have to push the narrative in a way that doesn't compromise who you are in your integrity.”

I like to say I was kind of like the silent ninja each week. I have unfiltered conversations with female founders, creatives and leaders to talk about ambition, visibility and what it really takes to build something meaningful in the public eye. Because being in a girl isn't about the spotlight, it's about owning it. I think the negatives need to be discussed and they need to be told to people who maybe don't do this every day, just so they know what's really going on. I feel like pulling the curtain back is important.

I'm going to stick with Bailey Taylor on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why hasn't a woman formally participated in a Formula One race weekend in over a decade? Think about how many skills they have to develop at such a young age?

“What can we learn from all of the new F1 romance novels suddenly popping up every year?”

He's still smelled of podium champagne and expensive friction. And how did a 2023 event called Waga Getting change the paddock forever? That day is just seared into my memory. I'm a culture writer and F1 expert Lily Hermann, and these are just a few of the questions I'm tackling on no grip. A Formula One culture podcast that dives into the under-explored pockets of the sport.

In each episode a different guest and I will go deeper into the wacky miss-haps scandals and sagas, both on the track and far away from it, that have made F1 a delightful, decadent dumpster fire for more than 75 years. Listen to no grip on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And the reason why is because they will, I mean they will eat a lot of plants. The burgundy snail also knows the Roman snail, the one that's mostly used for escargo these days. They weigh 20 gramsish as an adult, but they'll eat six grams of plant matter in a day. You have a bunch of burgundy snails running around your garden, they're going to eat your hostes, they're going to eat your seedlings, they're going to tick you off. And so there's a lot of, a lot of animosity that gardeners have towards snails and slugs too.

And so people have been trying things to get rid of snails for a very long time.

The problem is, number one you don't actually want to get rid of snails, especially native snails, or common garden snails.

And number two, the methods typically used are chemical and they can harm other life as well. So you basically want to leave the snails alone as much as possible. Yeah, there is some information here that Allison got from the Royal Horticultural Society in Britain.

“And they say, you know, don't use chemical pesticides, please. Like if you want to get rid of your snails, you can try and do so naturally by introducing predators.”

I guess, you know, throw a bunch of garden beetles out there and see what happens here. Just say, whoever walks out of here alive is, you know, deserves to live. It's like the thunder don't exactly. To enter one leaves as a matter of fact, if your board just go ahead and build a small scale replica of the thunder don't put this snail in the beetle ion. You sicko, that's right.

But then you have to act like Tina Turner and use that voice when hello rag at a snail. That's what you'd have to call it. That was a great impression by the way Chuck. Thank you. In addition to putting them in a death match against beetles,

you can go pick them out yourself if you go out at night with the flashlight. You can pick up plenty of snails. The thing is, you put them in your neighbor's garden. Yeah, exactly.

“Especially if they're a jerk, he'll really job him crazy.”

Now what you want to do is put them on your compost pile because again they like decaying stuff and they're really useful. So they'll be pretty happy there. And you can also trap them by carving out like a melons or grapefruit or something like that and they'll be attracted to that.

And it's just basically acts as a trap.

You just throw it back on your compost pile the next day and there you go. All right. Some people do say you, you, some people still use pesticides. If you're, if you're organic use ferric phosphate, which interrupts their ability to digest so they dive starvation in a few days. There's another one called metal to hide.

It's hard core stuff, it, it, it desiccates them, they end up dehydrating to death. And it's banned in the EU because they consider it unacceptably harmful to birds and mammals. Of course it is. Here in the US, you can use it as much as you like. Of course you can.

And they use it for the giant African land snail in particular.

Because again, metal to hide is hard core stuff.

And it turns out that the giant African land snail is hard core snail. Yeah, it's a hard core snail. Obviously, it would be an invasive species here in North America. These are the big ones that want to look like a bunny, I thought. They can be eight inches long.

They eat more than 500 species of plant. They will eat everything in their paths, including in Florida. They're real problem in Florida, apparently. Yeah. They will eat the stucco off your house to get more calcium.

And they can pass disease along to people and animals. Yeah, rat long worm. Yeah, meningitis. I've seen that they can carry a host of parasites. Or they can host the host of parasites.

Some of which will is good for the snail because it keeps animals from eating them. So it's like a defense mechanism. Right. But that can be harmful to people at times as well. Yeah. Yeah. You don't want rat long worm. Like you said, it can create meningitis in humans.

So it's best to not really handle snails with their bare hands. And especially don't eat the snail alive from your garden. That's a really bad idea. Yeah. But people actually collect.

“And I'm not sure if that's how they got here.”

But people collect these, you know, as an illegal pet. These giant African land snails. That's my understanding that they were imported as illegal pets. At least to South and the world are people doing. I don't know.

But they also have been have shown up in some other places, including Hawaii and Polynesia.

And so in just typical human fashion in the 50s, people said, well, wait.

There's this snail called a rosy wolf snail. And it's a predator. It's a little literal snail predator.

“It's just important a bunch of them to take care of this giant African land snail.”

Because I'm sure nothing will possibly go wrong because of this plan. It's foolproof. And that's what they did. And as a result, Hawaii has lost almost all of its native snail species in the wild. Because the rosy wolf snail was like, I just rather eat these other kinds of snails and leave the giant African snail alone.

Yeah, these things are pretty creepy though. I imagine there's got to be some kind of net geovidio of the wolf snail, like, you know, following its prey. Because for a snail, they're moving pretty fast. Yeah. When they're tracking something, they go double to triple their normal speed.

They will go up a tree after something. They will go underwater after something for a little while until they need to come up. It seems like they're just tenacious little fellas. And they will go after something until they catch it. Yeah.

And they like to swallow other snails whole, including their shell. Wow. And there's a mallocologist named Harry G. Lee, who dissected a rosy wolf snail and found 13 other snails shells in its gut. Yeah. That's a lot.

That's a lot. It's like in a Louisiana state license plate. Exactly. So yeah, you don't want these things on your beautiful pristine island. And once you bring them in, they're going to cause all sorts of problems.

“And that's what that goodbye snail video was about.”

It's definitely worth watching. But the rosy wolf snail is definitely considered invasive. And what I didn't know Chuck is the common garden snail. The one we're so familiar with is considered invasive in the United States. And it was originally imported because it was the one that used to be escargo.

And some of them escaped from farms and set up shop in the wild. And now it's called the common garden snail because it became so prolific. Yeah. And they don't know when people started eating escargo. And I think escargo is is the French name for that edible snail.

And also doubles is the name of the dish. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right.

French both. Yeah. But you know, people like this stuff.

It was always, you know, growing up.

You always heard about escargo was like this, you know, sort of as a kid. The first fancy weird food you'd heard of probably. Like do the wealthy have no bounds kind of. Right. Exactly.

And then, you know, we've got all signs.

“Should we finish up with just a bunch of kind of cool factoids?”

Yeah. For sure. Well, jewelry, snail shells have always, or have long been used as jewelry for humans. It's some of the oldest known human jewelry. They found this stuff, like necklaces and stuff made of sea snail shells that date back.

Like at least 120,000 years. It's not. Yeah. What else? The author Patricia Heismith, who was a very interesting person in her own right.

She wrote the strangers on a train and the talented Mr. Ripley novels. She was a snail pal, like the snail Wrangler in that video that I talked about. And like the snail Wrangler in that video that I talked about, she would go out and public with their snails as companions. There's a story of Patricia Heismith at a party who was revealed to have dozens of snails in her purse. Who she brought, so she'd have someone to talk to, her snail friends.

Yeah. How about that? How about that? That's what snail people do. Is that kind of?

Yeah. Yeah. This is really interesting, is they've been studying how snails might help us figure out Alzheimer's disease. From what I found is, we've talked about Alzheimer's before, which is when you have these Boyd plaque buildup or plaques, I guess, that buildup on the brain tissue.

And they don't exactly know how it causes memory loss, but this is what they're trying to figure out with the snails. These plaques are formed from a protein called amyloid beta, which we've talked about or a beta. And they have taken a beta and put it on otherwise very healthy pond snails. I have no idea why they chose, like why they thought the pond snails could candidate to begin with. Terrible lobbying group.

Maybe that's what this. But they put this beta on these healthy pond snails in within 24 hours.

They show evidence that they have harmed their memory, basically.

Like no cell loss, no brain tissue damage at all.

“Basically what they have sort of, you know, the results of all that is that a beta by itself can trigger the memory loss.”

And it's not from like damage to the brain or like a deterioration of the brain. Or the plaque buildup, right? Yeah, exactly. They think it's like a specific pathway for memory that's being damaged and the brain itself. Thank you, pond snails.

I know, it's amazing. I also saw it goes the other way too. The common garden snails mucus has been found to be bioactive. As an anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, an anti-apoptic, which means it prevents cell death. Oh, wow. So they think that they're figuring out how to turn that into a drug-to-tree Alzheimer's too.

So snails are just coming at us with the one-two punch to battle Alzheimer's disease. Yeah. God bless. I love it.

Thinking of God bless them, if you're subscribed to the West African Uruba religion,

you would say God bless the snail, because they're associated with Obatala, the Skyfather, as well as the Orecious collective deities to whom the land snail, the giant African land snail, in particular, is sacred.

“I got to read this last thing. This is the only last thing I got.”

Okay. This Nigerian snail recipe? Yeah. I'm not in eight snails. They call this Congo meat. It's got bread pepper, habaneros, garlic, onion, and then a season with cayenne and ground crayfish.

Yeah, you'll ask me at habanero, but it does sound extremely interesting. I would try it. I'd just be like, can you leave the habanero? Two hot. Two hot?

Yeah. Two hot for the hot tub? Yeah. Two hot for TV. Yeah.

So I've got one more thing, Chuck. Let's hear it. There is a weird thing that started popping up at the end of the 13th century in Northern France. If you look through illuminated manuscripts, meaning manuscripts that have the doodles in the margins and all that, like a mad magazine, you will start to notice there are pictures of knights battling giant snails.

Oh, yeah, that's so interesting. And they lasted for like a hundred or so years as like a trend. It actually came back again for a little while in the 15th century. And no one has any idea what they were trying to say. One of the theories is that it's just hilarious that it was meant as a kind of comic relief for your reading, like this kind of heavy texture,

whatever he just looked over and you're like, that's a night battling a snail. Right. Yeah. Other people say that the snails symbolize something like superhuman strength because they carry their house on their back. I kind of poo poo that one. I like this the comic relief one. And people are just like, hey, this is funny. Look at this, this knight's fighting a snail.

Yeah, this will be good for a laugh, said the medieval monk. Very interesting. I say so too.

“So if you want to know more about snails, everybody, go forth, research them.”

You could do worse than watching the strange and wonderful world of the snail Wrangler and goodbye snails. And if you say a snail in your garden, and especially if it's not doing anything to harm things, you just tip your head to and say, good day snail. You could be as much as five to ten years old. That's right.

Looks like that's right. It means it's time for listener mail. Yeah, we're going to do a correction. I wish we could get this one out sooner because we're going to continue to get emails about the great isotope eye on. My goodness, issue. Which I didn't know was an issue.

This was we a lot of them, but this is from Nick Lofty. PhD student at UC Irvine. Nick is getting a PhD in quantum chemistry. Oh, wow. Man, no one to hang out with you, Nick.

And Nick listens with his wife, Diana. Hey, Diana. And said, can't wait till we're in town for a show, but if you're at Irvine, I mean Irvine. How far is that from San Francisco? I don't know.

I mean, it's in the state of California. So it's got to just be like an hour away, right? Exactly. Yeah, everything in California is an hour away. Come see us.

Hey, guys. I wanted to offer us like correction about the periodic table. Don't hate me. When you mentioned the different weighted averages being a result of different isotopes, you mentioned that it is the loss or gain of an electron that constitutes the different isotopes.

This is actually incorrect. What you've defined is an ion, not an isotope. It is the varying number of neutrons that makes up the different flavors of isotopes. This is the thing that makes carbon dating possible. Love that episode, by the way.

Last thing guys, the chemistry is a whole is a very inaccessible branch of STEM. I hated it.

I failed my first chemistry class in one day.

I said to myself, she must be nuts. Here I am, 10 years later, and I am clearly the one who is nuts.

The long and short of this last bit is to never give up on science.

Nice. And that again is from Nick.

“I think it's said, "Lufty," but it's actually "Lufty."”

Okay. Like Chipotle? Chipotle? Yeah, that's right. Thanks a lot, Nick.

We'll call him Nick L from now on. Yeah. That was a great one. So everybody who wrote into lettuce now, we appreciate you for doing that. Because we like to get things right. And that was definitely a slip-up, and it is something that we needed to correct for sure.

So good job Chuck picking that one. Yeah.

“Well, if you want to get in touch with us and let us know we got something wrong or we got something right.”

Or tell us something about yourself or your dog or your pet goat doesn't matter. You can send it via email to [email protected]. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is Icarol. This podcast is all about going deeper with the women shaping culture right now. Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking about the pressure, the expectations, and the real work behind it all.

As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated.

So you have to work extra hard in a way that doesn't compromise who you are in your integrity. You know, I like to say I was kind of like a silent ninja. Listen to it girl with Bailey Taylor on the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins.

But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice in silence, correct? I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing.

Regulaspianned. Michael Manchini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is LoveTrap.

Laura. Scottsdale Police.

As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.

Listen to LoveTrap podcast on the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi. It's so interesting. Host of the spirit daughter podcast.

Or we talk about astrology, NATO charts and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today, I'm talking with my dear friend, Christo Williams.

“It can change you in the best way possible.”

Dance with the change, dance with the breakdowns, the embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves. You're so I'm like delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the spirit daughter podcast. Starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app.

Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.