On the Trail of the Snail

I first learned about the Partula snails (there are many species, but only one, the Polynesian tree snail, is kept in the US, so it's usually just referred to as the Partula snail) long before I saw one.  I was browsing my campus bookstore back in college (those being the days when college bookstores sold books), when I came across a book on zoos, one that would soon become one of my favorites ever. Dr. Jeff Bonner’s Sailingwith Noah was full of fascinating anecdotes from the world of zoos, some of which were old news to me, some were brand new.  This was a brand new one/

Dr. Bonner devoted a chapter of his book to the story of the snails, which I thought was one of the most interesting and compelling conservation stories I’d heard.  So interested was I in the snails that, more than once over the course of my career, I looked into getting the snails to exhibit at zoos that I worked at.  I would have loved to also have obtained some of the African giant land snails as well for education animals, but that was a no-go with the permitting authorities, so I’ve never seen one of those giants.  Ultimately, I found enthusiasm for working with snails to be somewhat... limited among many of my colleagues and institutional leadership, so none of these projects ever went anywhere.

Despite my interest in the snails, however, it took me a long time to actually see one.  Only a half-dozen US zoos have them and, pretty though they may be, they aren’t the easiest animals to create a visually appealing exhibit for.  Usually, they are  housed on paper towels in little plastic totes.  Easily overlooked in a zoo setting, just as they were in the wild.

I finally got my chance just l recently when I visited the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle.  There wasn’t as much time to explore the zoo as I would have liked, and I was very eager to see the snails.  I spent too much time going in circles around the small insect house, convinced that’s where I would find them, before I realized that they were actually in a separate building just down the path.  There, in the Tree Snail Laboratory display, I saw my first Partula snails.  

Some were sticking to the front of the glass viewing window, which Dr. Bonner assures his readers is the sign of a happy snail.  I was happy to be able to get a picture and appreciate them – they were beautiful, though even tinier than I expected, about the size of a pea.  Woodland Park is a gorgeous zoo of incredible exhibits, that I'll write about in turn, but of all of the animals and exhibits there, few made me as happy as those little snails stuck to the front of their window.