Nottingham: Newly discovered rare 'lefty' snail looking for love

The rare snail (centre) is unusual for its left-coiling shell

A rare left-coiling snail is looking for love after being discovered by a shell-searching academic in Nottingham.

The unusual gastropod was found by Prof Angus Davison, from the University of Nottingham, near to his home in the city.

The academic is now hoping to find the unnamed animal a mate so he can investigate how the shell occurs.

In 2016, a mate was found for a different "lefty" snail called Jeremy, who was found in Suffolk.

Jeremy eventually managed to find a mate before dying in 2017.

Despite 28 years of working on snails, Prof Davison had not found a left-coiling one himself - until the night before he was set to leave the country to search for them.

The new snail is a grove snail, or cepaea nemoralis - commonly seen in the UK.

Professor Angus Davison found the snail near to his Nottingham home

Prof Davison said: "In 28 years of working on snails, I have never found a left-coiling snail in the UK, so it was amazing to finally find one near my home."

Previous work by the academic, from the university's school of life sciences, has given insight into understanding how the left and right side of the body is established in other animals, including humans.

He previously experimented using "lefty" Jeremy, who also had genitals on the opposite side, making it very difficult for the snail to mate with other snails.

The snail eventually delivered right-coiling offspring, which were used to show that the rare left-spiralling shell of some garden snails is sometimes a developmental accident, rather than an inherited condition.

Prof Davison is also looking for the public's help to name the snail here.