Weeding the Web

Snails' homing instinct foiled!

Just a quickie, following my last post about Ruth Brooks’ research into homing snails.

To those whose bowling arm isn’t quite up to sending the little pests the requisite 300 feet, a letter in last Saturday’s Daily Telegraph might be of interest.

Tristan Gooley wrote to say that scientists have shown that snails lose their sense of direction if shaken in a bag.

So, a quick jiggle courtesy of Mr Sainsbury and back to pouring them over the fence?

Snails travel over 300 feet to continue chomping on cabbages

The search for Britain’s Best Amateur Scientist has ended with the award going to Ruth Brooks, for her experiment into the homing instincts of snails, which I wrote about last month.

Four finalists presented their findings to scientists at the British Science Festival in Birmingham last Tuesday and judges were impressed by the way her experiment had been set up and had engaged so many, including children.

As she said at the Festival, “Gardeners’ lore says that if you eject snails from your garden they then return.” The question was to find out whether the apparent homing instinct was merely a random movement towards food.

Having established in her own garden that the movement certainly wasn’t random, she then moved on to try to discover the distance that snails would travel. "On the evidence so far, it would be safe to take them beyond 100 metres or further and put them somewhere luscious for snails and then they won't come back.”

She described taking part in the experiment as exhilarating, challenging and scary. It’s also jolly useful for all those of us who knew they returned, but just weren’t sure from what distance. Lobbing snails more than 300 feet sounds something of a challenge, unless you're in training for the Olympic Javelin, so it looks as if the answer is collecting them in a bucket and sending them off to that “luscious” place. This does not mean the cabbage patch five doors down…

Snails’ Homing Instincts Put to the Test

It’s a fact that I’d thought widely known in gardening circles—snails return to feast on your vegetables even after you’ve chucked them (the snails, that is) over the fence into your neighbour’s garden (though, of course, no responsible gardener does that).

Over the years, I’ll wager that quite a few gardeners have marked snails’ shells with paint or Tippex, sent them flying, and had a moment of bitter satisfaction when they later found said snails finishing off the broccoli. However, it's a subject that has now caught the scientific world's attention.

Slugs as Pets - oh, please!

Here’s something for gardeners to think about. While we’re out there doing horrendous things to slugs – slicing, spearing, drowning, burning – some people cosset them indoors. No, really.

African Velvet Slugs are "nice", according to Exotic Pets. Not slimy, easy to keep and so easy to feed – just give them a range of fruit, vegetables and—wait for it—garden plants.

No change there, then…