The Strange and Wonderful World of the 'Snail Wrangler' | Short Film Showcase

I always like to ask my audience, when you think about land snails, what's the very first word that pops into your head? Just one word.

Hello? Yes, what else? Slimy? What else? Holes in your knees? So, damage to your garden.

A little more background on me: I do work full-time at Cornell University in a non-snail related position. However, I am also an unpaid research associate at paleontological research institutions and Delaware Museum of Natural History. Before I go further, I get this question all the time: What are slugs?

Slugs are snails. I define part of my mission as the spokesperson for land snails. My goal is helping people become ecologically literate about snails. This is my volunteers. They're from a garden and I don't know what they are.

Okay, but I suspect they're all the same. Okay, look very familiar, like mostly what is in my garden.

All right, let's see what you got here. Looks like you have O. arian subfuscus, and they're commonly known as the dusky arian. Dusky? This is what's been eating your garden, huh?

Big time. Yeah, I'm sorry. Well, that's really cute; it's $12. But I think I might have to get this. Definitely want this.

Oh, the kitchen set with a stove and an oven and a teapot. What do you think of that?

Oh, didn't like that. It's actually a little bit bigger scale than the pieces we have for the kitchen already. I make scenes for my snails.

It's a snail. I mean, a real snail?

Yeah, sure, it's a real snail. It's just a creative pursuit.

Oh, and they're not afraid of you?

No, I haven't done a lot of clothing for the snails yet, but once they start having a collection of snail clothes, maybe they could use a sewing machine.

We're going to get this beautiful wood stove.

Shot. Always browsing.

Yes, literally. How did this hobby come about?

To me, it's going to bring awareness to the land snails. Well, those are not something people think of as beautiful, but it might cause a conversation about land snails that maybe it wouldn't have happened if they didn't see this silly little scene with snails in it.

The first thing you wonder when you see them shopping around at the scene tray is, what do they eat?

Land snails and slugs are eating so low food web. They're consuming detritus and they're gleaning essential nutrients. The snail is passing calcium up through the food web and supplying it to all these animals. That's how important snails are; birdies can't lay eggs without calcium.

You got it. Some snails are going extinct, and this is of concern because you have potentially reduced numbers of the snail predators. If my role is to help snails become appreciated in the world, I find that I have to look at certain points of entry into their world.

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The upper tentacle of a snail has two different sensory organs in it. It has the eye, and it also has olfactory sensors at the end of it, which are for smelling and tasting. When the snail is waving these tentacles around as it travels, it's seeing, and it's smelling, and it's tasting.

Well, at the same time, as a science illustrator, I feel like I'm somebody who is communicating the parts and the meanings of the snail to a wider audience. When I look at snails moving their tentacles, I know the position of the tentacles. I know what they look like in reality, and I go stirred in many tons.

But when I'm doing something that's more free, I want to put some more life into it, some more expression and movements. The way they move, it's poetic; it's like snail ballet. It's a slow, thoughtful looking and sensing and smelling, and really taking in the environments.

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It just seems natural since I very much like listening to what snails have to tell the world. I think that qualifies me as a snail wrangler. The snails are not trainable the way dogs are or horses or growths or other animals.

I think what's now is it's more understanding their behavior and thinking about what they're going to like and not like. Snails are bothered by dry heat, and they might be bothered by certain chemicals and surfaces. A lot of it is looking out for the well-being of the snails themselves.

If snails need a break to have sex, we might just have an orgy on this tray. Land snails are hermaphroditic, so they actually have both male and female reproductive parts.

This part of the ritual of snails have to move away from each other and circle around and go back again. The lowest man might do a tail bite.

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Fighting, fighting. You can see on the right of the foot - subverting its penis.

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One did to stab a love dart in. So, the white bit that you see at the end of a love dart. Love darts are thought to enable each snail to retain the sperm of its partner better.

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What a beautiful native dance!

I can't remember a time when I didn't really love snails. When I was a child, I really liked to overturn the landscaping stones, and when you turn over a stone, you see pill bugs and millipedes, and you also see snails.

But to see the snails, you have to look much more closely than you might otherwise, because most snails are really tiny. No idea that they're so tiny! Actually, in North America, ninety-five percent of the snails are smaller than a lentil.

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We have these tiny Vilonia snails. One here, and here, and here, and here.

As a child, I was searching for library books that would give me some answers about what I was finding. There really weren't any.

So, I think since I was a really young child, I've been on a quest to learn more.

Ready to begin our lesson? The idea is that one snail will act as professor today.

Get the professor snail to stay. I've got your heart.

When the snail eats its food, it uses the radula. There are many rows and columns of tiny, tight teeth on the radula. The snail can move the radula out of its mouth and scrape the food.

Anybody wants carrots, raise your upper tentacle!

When I was very young, I would hold my snails up to my ear while it was eating, and I would hear the slightest little sound. And I told all my friends in school I can hear the snail in, and then I was bullied for the next 10 years.

And I couldn't let this go, and I felt that someday there's going to be a way I can show people how the sound of a snail is.

Oh, it's doing it. There's definitely something there.

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Yes, we've got snail sound! Our ears are sensitive enough to hear down to about 40 DB, and this is not the asleep.

About that, there's a lot of low-frequency portion to this. It makes me think that from the perspective of what they'd be able to put unquote here, that actually lines up with something that would be lower frequency.

Even though snails don't really hear the way we do, they don't have ears. They have statocysts, which have tiny cilia, tiny, tiny microscopic hairs, and those hairs can pick up vibrations.

So I hope that the snails enjoy my music.

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The way a snail moves from retracted inside the tentacle, pushing itself out, that's what inspired this music. To me, that action is sort of like an octave. When the snail's eye is inverted, that's the low note, and then as the hydrostatic pressure pushes the snail's eye out of the tentacle, to me, that's like going up.

And often, I think piano is a little percussive for snails, and that's the reason I'm learning the cello. I feel like cello is the instrument for snails.

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It's such a mellow-sounding instrument, and it vibrates just so beautifully. The tone of the cello and the range of the cello on the musical scales is really beautiful; it just feels right for snails for me somehow.

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If you are grossed out by the snail's body, if you just think about the spiral shell, it is beautiful.

So, if nothing else, if people appreciate the spiral shell, I think that's a good starting point.

So sometimes in my artwork, I just like to draw spirals. Lots of spirals, and you can sort of get lost in a spiral and enjoy it in its natural perfection.

You can tell the age of snails by how developed their adult shell characteristics are. When I was in graduate school, I collected a Meza, done the latest snail, but at the time it was such a juvenile. I actually didn't know its species name.

But I decided since it wasn't useful data for my study that it was just a juvenile snail, I thought, I'm gonna grow it up and see what it becomes.

I still have that snail. It's ten years old. As an artist and an illustrator, I very much like to draw from the snail.

It's hard to put into words; it's hard to explain why this snail is special. Not only because it's lived for this many years, but it's been a companion to me during hard times, and it's been a good friend, a spiritual advisor.

Of my name to this now, she said it's wise beyond its body and its form, and that's why she named it Mystery Fault.

I have learned patience from land snails. I've learned meditation from land snails. I've learned to be really still and feel the infinity in every second, in every nanosecond.

I think this world has too much rush and carelessness in it now, where we all try to multitask.

And when I think about snails, I think about what's important, and I think about slowing down and being in the moment.

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