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Kiwi snail in search for love
The Mercury
|September 08, 2025
A KIWI lady is desperate to find a female snail to mate with her pet snail named Ned, according to the Associated Press.
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Ned is a perfectly nice snail. If he had a dating profile, it might read: “Good listener, stable home, likes broccoli, seeks love.”
But he’s already exhausted his local options, and it’s not because he’s picky or unappealing. Instead, he’s a common garden snail with an uncommon anatomical problem that’s ruining his love life.
Ned’s shell coils to the left, not the right, making him the 1 in 40 000 snails whose sex organs don’t line up with those of the rest of their species. Unless another lefty snail is found, the young gastropod faces a lifetime of unintentional celibacy.
That dire prospect prompted a New Zealand nature lover who found the snail in her garden last month to launch a campaign to find his perfect match. But Ned’s quest for true love, perhaps predictably, is slow.
This story is from the September 08, 2025 edition of The Mercury.
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