The creepiest of crawlies

New Zealand has some of the strangest creatures on earth. From flightless birds to the prehistoric looking weta.
And one of the freakiest is the giant carnivorous snail. Considered endangered, it’s unlikely they get noticed.
To a nation of gardeners, snails are the enemy, but these native wonders aren’t eating your cabbages. They’re eating your earthworms, sucking them up like strands of spaghetti.
There are 16 species and 57 subspecies. A small colony even lives in the Wellington suburb of Khandallah.
Reaching up to 9cm, they are considerably bigger than the average snail and can live to the 20-year mark.
Legally protected but not cute or quirky like other endangered NZ species, their conservation has been haphazard.
The Powelliphanta genus of snails is named for the New Zealand scientist Arthur William Baden Powell, born on April 4, 1901 in Wellington, to Arthur Powell and Minne Sablofski.
Powell was educated in Auckland. After a printing apprenticeship and being a commercial artist, he became absorbed by shells, beginning his lifelong passion of conchology.
By age 20, he had published his first paper on mollusca and by 29 was appointed to the Auckland War Memorial Museum as conchologist and palaeontologist.
Snails were a specialty, including giant flax snails and the tiny rissoid sea snails. He used his art to good effect, with beautiful illustrations.
During his trip on the British research ship Discovery II around the Northland coast he revealed 128 new species in 1937 and in 1940 another 66. He also conducted studies at Stewart Island, the Chathams and the Kermadecs.
Over his lifetime he named hundreds of species (over 800) and created exhibitions for the museum.
He received an honorary science doctorate and only six years before he died was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to marine science.
He married Isabel Essie Gittos on December 19, 1928 and they had a son. She died in 1976.
He remarried two years later, Ida Madoline Worthy.
Powell died on July 1, 1987 and was cremated and his remains interred at Purewa Cemetery.
Photo of snail from the Te Papa collection.