• ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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      2 hours ago

      I’d say “this could cause speciation”. This mutation’s rarity makes for an astronomically slim chance of it occuring naturally if enough sinistral (lefty) snails meet and create a sustaining population (and also not die out through inbreeding). I don’t think there is a case of a pair of chirally opposite species. Maybe this once happened with Amphidromus inversus but if that’s the case, the two species have mutated since to be able to successfully mate both homo- and heterochirally. Now, a balanced population exists and hetero mating is more common.

      However, as humans come into the picture and can find mirrored snails and purposefully put them together, and breed them in safety into a large population (collecting newly found mutants worldwide and adding them into the gene pool to avoid inbreeding), speciation can indeed happen. The resulting mirrored snail can fulfil the same environmental niches as the original species while having an almost completely separate gene pool (only the mirror mutants of each species can cross-breed - and if my above theory is correct, the advantages of tapping into a new gene pool may have helped dextral/sinistral then-subspecies of Amphidromus inversus eventually acquire unique breedability).

  • trolololol@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    Also Jeremy is an asshole because he eats all the cookies, and that makes everyone hate him.

    Don’t be like Jeremy.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      5 hours ago

      they are hermaphrodites, so they mate with any other snail of the same species, and the same coiled shell. they usually dont have uni-sex individuals. flatworms, annelids are hermaphrodites as well. tapeworms are a type of flatworm that self-fertilizes in thier proglottid segments.

    • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
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      9 hours ago

      Most terrestrial snails are hermaphrodites, so it’s more like they can only mate with their own sex. But it’s a bit more complicated than that; they typically produce sperm earlier than they produce egg cells, to discourage self-fertilisation, so you could argue they start male and end female.

      • archonet@lemy.lol
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        56 minutes ago

        Careful, if the Republicans get wind of this they’ll start calling snails a woke, radical trans plot.

      • prettybunnys@piefed.social
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        9 hours ago

        Youth to inject random new genes for testing and age to work with what’s tried and true …. Huh.

    • Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus
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      9 hours ago

      Depends on the type of snail, there are male, female, hermaphroditic and parthenogenetic types. Since they wrote “his reproductive organs”, Jeremy is probably a hermaphroditic snail.

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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      3 hours ago

      Science because it’s a rare biological condition, called sinistral (as opposed to dextral) chirality. You also learn a new “fun science fact”: snails of opposite chirality cannot mate. (Only true for some species: for example, Amphidromus inversus has close to balanced dimorphic populations and can successfully mate both homo- and heterochirally, although hetero is more common).

      Meme because it’s a funny and relatable thing on the internet. Memes are no longer just image macros and memorable phrases.

    • fizzle@quokk.au
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      5 hours ago

      No, you’re thinking of clockwise vs counter clockwise.

      As the shell spirals around itself, it does not create a flat disk. Rather, it creates a cone shape.

      If Jeremy was pointed North, the point of his cone would point to the west, while most other snails would point east.

      You can see it in the photo on this post.