by Leslie Cox; Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Ever wondered if snails have a built-in homing instinct?

Are you one of those gardeners who cannot kill a slug or snail? Do you resort to physically moving them out of your yard? (Hopefully not into your neighbour’s yard!) If you do move the snails from your garden then this article is for you.

One British gardener conducted an experiment to verify whether there was any truth to the old wives’ tale snails have a homing instinct…something scientists have yet to determine. Incredibly, her findings supported the old tale.

The gardener collected some snails from two different areas of her garden. To help her experiment, she placed a dot of paint on their shells before releasing them 30 feet (10 m) outside her property boundary. Would you believe she counted a credible number of released snails back in her garden?!

To be absolutely sure, this gardener repeated the experiment but increased the distance to 100 feet (30 m). She still had a significant number of marked snails return.

Don’t believe me? She won a weekly BBC Radio 4 science show competition and was written up in Gardener’s World magazine, November 2010 issue.

Goes to show…even snails know a good buffet dinner when they find one. Wonder if this is also true of slugs?