Last month, 800 snails died from a fridge malfunction – but these weren’t just any old snails!
They were our special giant, meat eating snails – Powelliphanta augusta – a group of snails that used to live on a special place on the West coast of our South Island: the Stockton plateau.
So why were they living in a fridge? They were moved there to make way for a coal mine. DOC picked up every last snail – around 6000 of them and tried to find new homes for them.
Unfortunately, they haven’t had much luck finding a new homeland so 1,600 were left in a fridge at a 10 degrees Celsius.
One day however the fridge was accidentally switched to zero degrees. When DOC discovered their mistake, all 800 snails were found dead! Oh no.
These snails shouldn’t be living in fridges, they’ve adapted to life on the plateau for millions of years and they have a very specific habitat, so finding a new home for them was always going to be hard.
Now their cousins – Powelliphanta patrickensis – may be kicked off their homeland because it’s under threat from a proposed coal mine on the Denniston plateau.
To find out more about our Powelliphanta snails see here.
