Giant African Land Snails Invade South Florida

South Florida is now being infested with a species of snails called the giant African land snail (Achatina fulica). These snails can grow as big as rats, reports Reuters.

The snails are considered to be one of the most damaging snails to crops, and can eat almost 500 species of plants. The snails are from Africa, particularly Kenya and Tanzania, and their first established population in the U.S. was discovered in the year 1966.

About 117,000 of these snails have been caught since September 2011 in Miami-Dade, with more than 1,000 being captured in a week, as reported by Reuters. Under optimal conditions, the snails can produce a clutch of about 200 eggs, with nearly 5-6 clutches a year.

"If you got a ham sandwich in Jamaica or the Dominican Republic, or an orange, and you didn't eat it all and you bring it back into the States and then you discard it, at some point, things can emerge from those products," said Denise Feiber, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

In addition to destroying crops, these snails carry a parasitic rat lungworm that can cause illness in humans, including a type of meningitis. So far, there have been no reported cases of a disease caused by the rat lungworm in the U.S., said Feiber.

The pests were introduced in the mainland U.S. by some kids who were visiting Hawaii between the 1950s and 1960s. Movement of the snails around the country has been mostly due to requests from educational institutions and sales from pet stores.

"They're huge, they move around, they look like they're looking at you ... communicating with you, and people enjoy them for that. But they don't realize the devastation they can create if they are released into the environment where they don't have any natural enemies and they thrive," Feiber said, reports Reuters.

Feiber said that residents of South Florida will soon start seeing more of these slimy creatures, with the arrival of rains in the state in about seven weeks.