Parts of Broward County under quarantine due to giant African land snails (www.nbcmiami.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Exaggeration207@beehaw.org to c/news@beehaw.org

20 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The snail can grow up to eight inches long, and can potentially carry the parasite rat lungworm, which may cause meningitis in humans and animals. The snail should not be handled without gloves because of the meningitis risk.

The snails can lay over 2,500 eggs in just one year, making the population difficult to contain. Florida has successfully eradicated the giant African land snail twice before, in 1975 and 2021.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] Lowbird@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I'm pretty sure African Land Snails are one of those animals that get imported as "pets" by rich idiots, and this is why they are in florida now.

Could also be eggs that hitched a ride on something else, but some people love mega-snails, so.

[-] Sean@liberal.city 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

@Lowbird I suspect that it didn't take that much money to get one of these as a pet, it was probably a bunch of middle class Florida men/women that this "genius" move. I'm just challenging the "rich idiots" with the likelihood that not so rich idiots are to blame

this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023

51 points (100.0% liked)

World News

22057 readers

67 users here now

Breaking news from around the world.

News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.

Guidelines for submissions:

Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
Social media should be a source of last resort.

These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.

For US News, see the US News community.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS