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zem 4d ago

I remember when those snails invaded bombay in the 80s. saw one or two, and then they were suddenly everywhere. it was amazing how fast it happened.

ai_critic 4d ago

> The snails, which actually grow to about eight inches in length, but can stretch—if nothing else, for headline-writing purposes—to nine inches, have worried Florida authorities since 1969.

Delightfully self-aware.

jyounker 4d ago

There is also the band... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0qQ1pomYzk

:)

drivingmenuts 4d ago

The writer probably had to have a private moment when she realized she could use this title.

harperlee 4d ago

Awesome way to show you’re not an LLM, by the way.

codedokode 4d ago

Small snails look cute but 8-inch snail sounds a bit scary. Also how do they avoid being eaten by predators if they are slow and vulnerable?

Also I recently saw small slugs which were crawling on the sidewalk along with worms who get to the surface after rain. I wonder what those slugs were planning to do given its middle of October and temperature is merely 10°C (50F)?

pixl97 4d ago

Some things eat them like opossum and foxes, but the snails spread bad parasites so animals might learn to avoid them.

They can fertilize themselves so you only need one. And they lay 1600 or so eggs a year in batches of around 200.

They are breeding machines.

PeterHolzwarth 4d ago

"but 8-inch snail sounds a bit scary"

Avoid Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.

planckscnst 4d ago

I've lived in Seattle for 12 years and have never seen a slug here let alone a large one. I have seen those sidewalk worms after the rain, though

weknowbetter 3d ago

You should see a lot of slugs if you go into the forest. They are out there!

robotresearcher 3d ago

Long time Vancouver, BC resident. My pre-school daughter would fill a pocket with 5 inch banana slugs. Delightful to discover later in the house.

derektank 4d ago

Banana slugs are long but not particularly large. Also, you only rarely see them in cities

kergonath 4d ago

> Also how do they avoid being eaten by predators if they are slow and vulnerable?

They mostly don’t. They just breed fast enough to compensate.

fermentation 4d ago

These giant snails are actually also really cute

unrented7977 3d ago

> Also how do they avoid being eaten by predators if they are slow and vulnerable?

That's why they evolved shells.

wilbo 4d ago

The article only briefly mentions the horrors of rat lungworm, but if you live in a warm, tropical climate where this is prevalent (Hawaii, increasingly Florida) you really want to avoid it.

Apparently there is some evidence that people born in regions where it is more prevalent have some natural resistance.

The main way to get it is accidentally ingesting an infected slug on raw produce, like leafy greens.

Here's a podcast on this parasite, what's known about it and how to avoid it: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-daniel-and-kellys-extraor...

karim79 4d ago

My personal favourite parasite is the human botfly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dermatobia_hominis

This bastard is a fascinating one. I mean there are others, but this one is close to my heart.

throwup238 4d ago

I recommend reading accounts of traveling through the Amazon, like The Lost City of Z. The number of pests in rainforests that do horrifying things to the human body is astounding and the botflies are only one of them. Makes me thankful for modern conveniences like pure DEET.

karim79 3d ago

I just searched that and it looks great! Will check it out, thank you.

duskwuff 4d ago

> this one is close to my heart.

That sounds dangerous - you should probably see a doctor. ;)

karim79 3d ago

Hahaha I knew someone would drop this pun.

whilenot-dev 4d ago

OT, but giant African snails love to eat colored paper, and since their body won't absorb the pigments, they'll produce colorful excrements which can be used as experimental material: https://dornob.com/bright-blue-snail-poo-excrement-used-to-m...

kbutler 3d ago

Experimental _art_ / crafting material.

dang 1d ago

I was going to suggest that you submit this and then noticed you already did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50130262.

We should definitely have a thread about this! But we need to pace our giant snail threads :)

Generally we downweight follow-ups so as to avoid repetition [1, 2]. But once enough time has gone by for the hivemind caches to clear, what is old becomes new again. If you would be willing to email hn@ycombinator.com in, say, a couple months, we could invite a repost and put it in the SCP [3].

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308

soupfordummies 4d ago

Excellent headline and graphic

zahlman 4d ago

Closer (just give me a few hours to get there)

president_zippy 3d ago

"I wanna fry you like an escargot. I want some dinner for my insides."

1potato 3d ago

Came here for the NIN puns. Did not leave disappointed.

sellmesoap 4d ago

Fragile, and further down the spiral, sounds like snail attributes all along. I recommend the mollusk by ween while we're on the subject.

adzm 4d ago

Happiness in slithering

sublinear 4d ago

my whole existence is flan

teeray 4d ago

Terrible Slime

kridsdale1 4d ago

The Inward Spiral

3RTB297 4d ago

I know people don't want to hear it, but when cooked correctly, wild-caught African land snails are actually delicious. They do take some work to scrub the foot pad, and you want to cook them for a long time to both soften them up, and obviously to ensure there's no parasites left. But in a Ghanaian spinach soup - amazing.

I say wild caught, because farmed snails are fed wilted lettuce, and taste like wilted, rotten lettuce.

MrDrMcCoy 4d ago

Good flavor I can buy, but the last time I tried snails it was the texture that had me gagging.

10729287 4d ago

To be honest most of us French only love it for the garlic butter we serve them with.

fhdkweig 4d ago

Americans eat lobster for the same reason. It was considered trash food until we discovered garlic butter.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=was+lobster+considered+peas...

rickydroll 4d ago

I still consider it trash food. I have a firm policy of not eating any seafood that wears its skeleton on the outside.

williamdclt 4d ago

That's kind of why I don't really like french snails: it's mostly about the butter, and I don't find eating a chunk of butter to be a pleasant experience really! Give me garlic butter on bread any day instead

It's not the only way the french eat snails though, in the south it's eaten in a tomato sauce (catalan-style as they call it, so probs not just a french thing)

kergonath 4d ago

French escargots are smaller. I can see how the texture would be off-putting in a snail that’s about ten times as big.

10729287 4d ago

Whelks come to my mind. I like them with ton of mayonnaise but it’s hit or miss. When I get it out of its shell, if it’s take too much time to see it unfold completely, I know I won’t have a pleasant time. You never know what you’ll get with them. Snails are more predictable.

3RTB297 3d ago

Yeah, it's like conch. If it's not cooked low and slow, it's like chewing a bicycle tire. It takes a good 2-3+ hours to do it right.

arximboldi 3d ago

In the south of Spain we eat plenty of snails and they are delicious. Go to Cordoba in May (spring is snail season, in Sevilla and Huelva you'll also find them, but in Córdoba you even have kiosks that in season sell only that) and have some Caracoles with a beer. They're smaller than the French ones and are cooked in minty and gently spiced water. Perfect snack with a very cold beer. As a proper dish or tapa we also eat escargot-like ones (Cabrillas) in a spicy tomato sauce. Also delicious.

alwa 3d ago

Once or twice I’ve enjoyed snails flushed/fed up on green herbs and parsley. They effectively come pre-seasoned. The ones I’ve encountered have been smallish.

I understood it to be more of a finishing feed than a long-term dietary commitment on the part of the snail farmer, but both places I attended have since gone out of business. So maybe the economics are in fact against it…

tambeb 4d ago

Gift link:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/10/giant-african-sn...

dang 1d ago

I've put that in the toptext too. Thanks!

PopAlongKid 3d ago

The first time I learned of these was from the movie "The Naked Prey" where the according to google search,

  • He [protagonist] finds a giant African land snail (Lissachatina fulica) crawling on a rock.
  • Starving and exhausted, he uses his knife to carve the large mollusk out of its shell and eats the snail meat raw.
  • After swallowing it, he comically picks a sharp thorn off a nearby bush to clean his teeth.

WarOnPrivacy 4d ago

A FL county just north of Tampa has been dealing with GALS for a few years https://www.cityofnewportrichey.org/Departments/Public-Works...

dspillett 4d ago

https://archive.is/CPsFp - to view without individually unchecking 1249 “legitimate interests in stalking you around the Hinterwebs” flags…

xyxc 4d ago

My favourite band.

DonHopkins 4d ago

Running in slime, my body's so slow, everyone else is way too fast.

I can't exchange this living shell, give me some salt, and turn me to jell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0qQ1pomYzk

https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/Nine_Inch_Snails

bossyTeacher 4d ago

For everyone confused, read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Inch_Nails

hypfer 4d ago

Topic itself aside, that is some fantastic writing. A joy to read and a genuine value proposition.

That is what journalism worth its paywall looks like.

walrus01 4d ago

We should get Trent Reznor's opinion on these.

anticorporate 4d ago

I just imagine a field of giant snails approaching me at a glacial pace, all loudly singing "Bow down before the one you serve. You're going to get what you deserve." Nightmare fuel.

chasil 4d ago

https://archive.ph/CPsFp

skipkey 4d ago

The salt river northeast of Phoenix has been infested with apple snails from central america - they get up to 6" or so. The forest service regularly runs events where people in kayaks and on paddle boards help clear that section of river of the clumps of eggs.

ButlerianJihad 4d ago

I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home; they're not much bigger than two meters!

__s 4d ago

> giant African land snails

Brings back memories of Africanized bees

ku1ik 3d ago

Upvoted because of the title :)

giardini 4d ago

paywall.

chihuahua 4d ago

One of the world's most 1EET H4X0R5, who hasn't left his parents' basement in 10 years and is rumored to be the operator of 5chan, told me that you can use archive.is to circumvent most paywalls, including that of The Atlantic.

ggm 4d ago

Or, and don't take my word for it, ask Abraham Lincoln, who told me to try "reader mode" in Firefox.

doginasuit 4d ago

Abraham Lincoln's recommendation didn't work for me, reader mode shows the abbreviated text.

ggm 3d ago

In firefox? Strange, I just used it to read the full text of a piece about botched executions.

doginasuit 2d ago

Yes. Was that with The Atlantic?

masfuerte 4d ago

Or disable JS. I didn't know The Atlantic had a paywall.

Nine-Inch Snails (theatlantic.com)