or how I became an internationally recognized snail pornographer.
This is how it started. My dog and I were passing through my yard on November 26, 2018. Yes, right around Thanksgiving. It was chilly. I looked down and spotted not one, but two largish snails occupying the same dead oak leaf. They were close to each other, but as I watched, they glided to opposite ends of the leaf. Then they started to turn around. That's when I got out my camera. It was a fancy camera with a macro lens, but I was new to its powers (which is to say, I couldn't locate the flash!), and the light was fading. That's why the photo quality of this story is less than perfectly amazing.
They reapproached each other.
When they were again face to face, weird white bubbles started to appear on their necks.
The bubbles got long and tentacular. The snails got closer and closer.
They twined their tentacles (which it's time to acknowledge were not tentacles but snail phalluses) together...
And tied them in a knot!
As I understand the matter, they joined their phallus tubes together end-to-end, and exchanged genetic material. Snails are hermaphrodites, so both have both phalli and eggs to be fertilized.
All of this occurred at a snail's pace, of course, the sun fading faster than the lovers' ardor. After about half an hour, the snails disentangled.
The phalli began to subside into their necks, but again, not swiftly. The snails were still joined by strings of snail slime. (Sex is a messy business, I guess, no matter who is doing it!) Because it was getting dark and I was really struggling with my good camera, I took some photos with my phone.
After this, things continued to be strange, and I don't have great photos. The snails moved in close, patting each other's faces with their horns, for all the world as if they were kissing and caressing, unwilling to say goodbye. But then, one would abruptly yank back, tucking in all its horns and retreating most of the way into its shell. Then it would gain courage and emerge again, and more face-patting would occur, and then the other snail would yank back as if suddenly having its own turn to be shy.
Later, I learned what was actually going on. Snails have one long track through them, traveled by food and also by semen. But they have a digestive chamber off to the side, and they can route food (or semen) into it at will. They have a unique ability to decide, after sex, that they would prefer not to bear offspring with this particular partner, and shunt the semen off into the digestive chamber before it gets to the eggs!
Obviously, selective contraception is not in the partner's best interests, and I guess snails are as insecure as anyone else, post-coitus with a new partner. But instead of offering one another tender reassurance, they engage in a kind of warfare. After sex, both snail partners attempt to shoot each other with a (possibly misnamed) love dart--a sharp, mucous-covered spine coated in a hormone that causes the digestive tract of the darted snail to spasm so the sperm is forced swiftly past the digestive chamber, negating the snail's powers of contraception. Diabolical, right? The whole time, I thought the snails were enacting a kind of "parting is such sweet sorrow" drama when they were actually trying to stab each other and force conception--a very different kind of intercourse!
I used my phone's flashlight to light the way for my good camera, because, what with all the excitement, I still hadn't managed to locate the flash! Not a great photo, but maybe that clear thing sticking out of the left-hand snail, just below the lower foreground horn, is a love dart? Maybe?
Eventually one snail moved off, while the other one (the darted one?) hunkered down in place. At least 45 minutes had elapsed, and my good dog was looking very chilly and bored as she waited for me to remember her existence! We continued on our walk in the fading dusk, and that would have been the end of the matter, except that I uploaded a few photos to iNaturalist.com. iNaturalist is an app that allows regular citizens to upload their observations of nature being itself, have them identified by experts, and contribute to data banks available for scientific research. And what do you know, my photo was selected as their Observation of the Day, available for viewing by a vast international audience!
And that's the story of how I became an internationally recognized snail pornographer.
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