Hardworking snails

Image from The Telegraph, UK

Life has been tough. Travelling for 110 years and just covering around 88 feet or 27 painstaking metres. But this is what a snail recently discovered in Britain did. Papillifera papillaris, a type of Italian snail, arrived in England towards the end of the 19th century. They were brought in on a stone balustrade imported from Rome to the Cliveden Estate in Buckinghamshire, England. It crawled its way through to the fountain in the gardens where it was found by people who were cleaning statues in the garden of the mansion, which today is a hotel. Named the "Cliveden snail", it now lives in a colony of its own. Jane Ridout Sharpe, a snail expert, helped to identify the tiny creature, several 100 of which roost in the fountain's cracks and carved details. It first came here in 1896 and is commonly found in the Mediterranean often found snoozing in old buildings.