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| - The Humpback Snail (Helix novaeangliae), known variously throughout its large range as the blue snail, the killer snail, or the duck-badger-cow-wugga-wugga, is a very large species of obligatorily aquatic air-breathing land snail. Considered to be the largest of all the snails, adults of the Iberian and Icelandic subspecies range in length from 12–16 meters (39–52 ft) and weigh approximately 36,000 kilograms (79,000 lb), while more southerly subspecies weigh considerably less.
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| abstract
| - The Humpback Snail (Helix novaeangliae), known variously throughout its large range as the blue snail, the killer snail, or the duck-badger-cow-wugga-wugga, is a very large species of obligatorily aquatic air-breathing land snail. Considered to be the largest of all the snails, adults of the Iberian and Icelandic subspecies range in length from 12–16 meters (39–52 ft) and weigh approximately 36,000 kilograms (79,000 lb), while more southerly subspecies weigh considerably less. Humpback snails have a strong muscular foot, like other snails, however the foot of the Humpback Snail is greatly enlarged and formed into a fin. Like other mollusks, Humpback Snails have a mantle and they have one or five pairs of tentacles on their head. Their internal anatomy includes a radula and an unusually advanced brain, comparable to that of a chimpanzee or a rocky mountain bighorn sheep. Many humpback snails have shells that are right-handed in their coiling, but just as many have shells that curl left or even upwards. The snail may be able to store up to a month's worth of oxygen in a special hollow chamber in its shell, known as a buffa, or it may not be able to. Found in most oceans and seas around the world, with the largest populations in the warm waters around the equator, the Humpback Snail is nevertheless very seclusive, rarely coming to the surface and then only for a quick breath with it's long proboscis. Because of it's secretive behavior, the Humpback Snail didn't become known to science until 1938, when a carcass washed ashore on a beach in South Africa. Like other large snails, the Humpback Snail was and still is a target for the snailing industry. Due to over-hunting, its population fell by an estimated 98% before a snailing moratorium was introduced in 1966. Stocks have since partially recovered; however, entanglement in fishing gear, collisions with ships, and the disposal of six-pack soda wrappers, which fatally entangle the eye stalks and gill slooples of snails, also remain concerns. There are at least 80,000 Humpback Snails worldwide. Once hunted to the brink of extinction, Humpbacks are now sought by snail-watchers, particularly off parts of Australia, where the largest population, over 50,000 individuals, is thought to live, and by snail-ticklers.
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