"Ned's coils are on the wrong side of his shell! As any nature lover will know, snails have a 'whorl' - a pattern of spirals or concentric circles - found on only one side of their shells. The large majority of snails have the spiral on the right side, but around one in 40,000 have the spiral on the left side."
"Snails are asymmetrical, so when engaging in normal 'face-to-face' mating, two right-coiled snails fit together nicely like a jigsaw. Conversely, one left-coiled snail and right-coiled snail don't quite fit together properly when facing, so copulation can't occur. The upshot of this is it's incredibly difficult ( but not impossible) for left-coiled snails to find a partner with whom they can mate with."
Ned is a garden snail with a left-coiled shell, a rare anatomical variation occurring in about one in 40,000 snails. Most snails coil to the right, and asymmetrical body plans allow two right-coiled snails to align for face-to-face mating. Left-coiled and right-coiled snails cannot align properly, making copulation between mismatched coilings generally impossible, so left-coiled snails must find other left-coiled partners. Ned was found by Giselle Clarkson in a Wairarapa vegetable garden, prompting scientists to launch an international search for a similarly rare left-coiled mate to enable successful reproduction.
Read at Mail Online
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