The Barracuda

A very Bad Reputation

The Mahoran land snail leaves, in the early morning, large unkind trails of dry whitish slime on the walls of the house, along the ground, on the leaves from the garden, even on the dishes in the kitchen. It has a reputation as a "dirty animal", which made of it the most hated creature in Mayotte. The very mention of its name is considered of bad taste.

The species encountered in Mayotte are commonly known as the African giant snails or achatina fulica, or simply achatina.

It is called giant because it is about 8 to 20 cm long and about 10 cm in diameter at the highest level of its conical shell and can weigh up to 1500 g. These are measurements not comparable with other known worldwide gastropods. It is able to survive for several years, up to 9 years. But its real life expectancy is one year and a half.

In Mayotte the achatina fulica is usually active at night and took refuge in the soil during the day. It is primarily herbivorous. It is alleged to be carnivorous, sometimes feeding on corpses of other species. This omnivorous aspect however is source to controversy.

It belongs to the Lissachatina fulicula family, the most invasive and voracious species.

It is present in almost all tropical and humid regions. It has a very high fertility rate : It lays about 1800 eggs a year with a survival rate of 90%.

In the absence of natural predators, its proliferation is a source of serious problems for arable lands and public health.

Agriculture in Florida had to bear the blunt of this in 2011. These gastropods have literally invaded the territory to the despair of the inspectors from the Department of Agriculture. Indeed, since September 2011, when the first African giant snail was spotted, they captured 117 000 of them. These ravenous snails attacked almost everything: green area (more than 500 variety of plants) but also stucco and wall plaster to calcify their shell. When we know that agriculture is the second main economic activity in Florida after tourism, this invasion became very problematic for the authorities.

Its thick slime may contain a worm that passes on a non-lethal form of eosinophilic meningitis, but which can cause severe stomach ache to man. The pathways of contamination are the consumption of raw or undercooked intermediate and paranoetic hosts, their handling, or the absorption of salads, fruits, vegetables and even drinking water contaminated by these intermediate hosts. The larvae migrate into the central nervous system, the muscles, the heart and the lungs and die without reaching maturity, causing various symptoms.

The history of its immigration to the USA remains unclear: it is said that, already in 1966, back home from holidays in Miami, Florida, a boy innocently transported in his luggage 3 African giant snails for use as pets. His grandmother, disgusted by the grim spectacle of these invertebrates, eventually released them into the wild. From these 3 snails a population of 18 000 young were born and the authorities took 9 years to stamp them out.

However, we must do him justice

In fact, all is not negative in the kingdom of this mollusc.

Its shell, it seems, can almost naturally treat stammering.

The powder of this shell would serve to accelerate wound healing or to remove stretch marks.

Some use these shells for aesthetic or superstitious purposes : to make snail-shell necklaces to be worn around the neck for good luck.