АХАТИН.РФ

A lot of species of these gigantic snails live in tropical countries of the Old World. Especially Achatina can be found in many humid tropical forests of Africa, some other species are found in Southeast Asia, Indonesia and islands of the Malay archipelago. But our attention is attracted by the only one kind  - Achatina fulica, wich origin is East Africa, where it is distributed from Ethiopia to Mozambique.

Acclimatization of the "ulitki" (snails) in some cases goes back to very remote times. Date of their arrival to Madagascaris is hidden deeply in the past centuries, but there is no doubt that they didn't originate there.

Outside their homeland the very first adoption of Achatina took place in 1803 on the island of Mauritius, then, somewhen in 1821 - on the island of Reunion. Malacology Benson brought Achatina from the island of Mauritius to India and released into his own garden in 1847.

People have "scattered" generously this interesting species in all tropical countries of the Old World. Achatina appeared on the Seychelles around 1840, the Comoros Islands - in 1860, the Ceylon Islands - in 1900 in Perak and Malaya - 1928 and almost everywhere these snails produced a lot of harm to crop plantsand, in addition, caused great damage of tea and rubber-trees plantations. In 1931, the snails appeared in southern China, in 1935 - on the island of Java, in 1936 - on the island of Sumatra, and in 1937 - in Siam.

In 1938 the Japanese brought Achatina to the Mariana Islands (Saipan and Tinian) with the intention to cultivate them as the sourse of delicious meat, where they spreaded quickly with plant products transported throughout the archipelago (in 1946 Achatina rooted on the island of Guam). This mollusk was invaded on many other islands of Oceania too- the Hawaiian Islands, where, however, its habitat, except the island of Oahu, is greatly restricted. In the U.S. it appeared in California in 1947, but luckly the California climate was unsuitable for this mollusk, accustomed to the wet habitats in the tropics. Unlikely to California the apperance on Achatina in Florida caused the real plaque.

With the other words, nowdays Achatina occupies a vast area in the tropical areas of the Eastern Hemisphere due to its exceptional ability to rapid reproduction (offspring from one snail can reach 8 billion in a three year time!) and its ecological flexibility. In Ceylon once it was counted 227 clams of this species on the trunk of a coconut pulm. On the island of Java one resident shot them each morning till the 400 units on the site. At Marianas there are so many of these "pretty snails", that they often cause traffic accidents as vehicles slide on the road covered  completely  with crushed snail bodies.

 Achatina giant shows its desire to settle on the trees in a very curious way in all occupided countries. They eat simply up the buds and shoots of the set of crops, with emphasis on banana, cacao, melon, rubber and citrus trees as well as protective plantation plants.

Achatina - the largest representative of the land snails. Its shell can reach 25 cm and body - 30 cm. The size of this species depends on the conditions of detention. In the Guinness Book of Records a snail with its weight of 500 - 600 gramms is  listed (the  very last record reports the snail of 900gr.), but in our climate is stunted by the representatives of the largest weighs only about 430 gramms.

This snail has broken  the records not only of gigantism, but "tourism"too. Let's see. The original habitat of it - Eastern Africa, then it  moved slowly to Madagascar and the Seychelles. In 1910 it was found on the island of Sri Lanka and India, and in 1920 it became well known in Malaysia, Indochina, on the island of Taiwan as well on various Pacific islands.

When the number of snails had increased dramatically, the local population   experienced considerable difficulties combating it. Although it is not  proved certainly, it is believed that the Japanese army after  the World War II brought these snails from the islands of the South Pacific, where it was used as food, to their homeland. The Japanese also began to use it as food. The snail's meat began to pick up good market price and farmers to earn suffishient income began to grow them artificially. Few of snails managed to escape. Fortunately, these snails do not live in the areas to the north of the island of Koo-Su, so that the trees in other parts of Japan have been saved from complete devastation.

However in East Africa these snails do not cause such trouble due to the existance of another snail species- gonaksis, which is the the natural enemy of Achatina  and keeps its population in borders.

Also, in the past it was a superstition  that the soup from this snail was a good cure from tuberculosis, that's why it was brought specifically to India, Singapore, California and many tropical islands.

In the U.S. Achatina turned into a national disaster. Few snails happened once free in Florida and after a couple of years these pretty taciturns propageted so much that destroyed everything in the state - crops in the fields, bark on the trees and even the plaster on the houses! It was not even a joke - to build their shells snails need calcium and they extracted calcium from plaster, licking the walls. Since then, Achatina snails are out of the law in the U.S., the snails themselves are awarded the death penalty and their fans - 5 years in prison.

Achatina snails play a useful role in the nature. They are barely legible in the choice of food and eat decomposing plant residues, animal dung, different impurities, ie, they are the environment cleaners. They can even "clean out" the whole rotten trees.

We should remember that only the young snails harm agricultural crop plants. Only they have "a sweet tooth" for the kidneys of bananas, tubers and fresh leaves.

Despite its volume the giant African snail moves very slow with a speed of 1 cm per minute.

In Russia, Achatina can not survive in vivo,because of too long cold winter, but there is no question to keep it at home. Moreover it is not dangerous at all. Therefore, we can observe the recent increase of  "domestic tamed"Achatina "stock". These snails are some sort of a model of an ideal pet indeed.