Slimy Army That Might Cause Fungal Infection Invades Vietnamese Woman's Home

The outside of the house is teaming with the small animals, as recent weather transformed the yard into a gastropod haven. These bugs are largely an inconvenience, but they can transmit a fungus that can make people sick.

Slimy Visitors

(Photo : Getty Images)

Thousands of unwanted, slimy, slithering visitors sneaked into a Vietnamese family's yard and got too close for comfort.

Recent intense rains in the Hanoi area have pushed out the mollusks from their underground lairs. Last week, a woman recorded the tiny critters as they gently made their way into her yard, sliding over the concrete of a patio or driveway. Snails were even visible clinging to her house's brick facade.

The anonymous woman claimed she opened the door and was surprised to see her yard overrun with snails. Before going on, uh crawling, toward her shed, they had taken over her garden. She tried to scare them away, but they kept returning, bringing more of them.

However, after the sun came out, most of them returned to their hiding places.

These single-lung air-breathing gastropods thrive in wet and humid settings and are known for their characteristic spiral shell. Experts say they can be observed out and about hours after a heavy downpour, partially for survival and partly because they find it easier to travel on wet surfaces.

They are known to swarm in muddy locations like Vietnam's ponds and flooded rice fields.

According to AccuWeather, the temperature in Hanoi hit 91 degrees Fahrenheit on the day the snails were videotaped.

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Pests

These inconspicuous critters may be serious garden pests. They can contain a fungus that causes plant root and stem rot and a parasite that can make humans sick.

Nonetheless, these little antennaed gastropods are a highly sought-after gastronomic delicacy on the Vietnamese culinary scene: they are among the country's favorite "street food."

Gastropods

Limpets, whelks, periwinkles, abalones, poisonous cone shells, shellless nudibranchs, sea slugs, and sea hares are all members of the gastropod family.

Around 4,000 validly documented gastropod species in continental seas, including at least 33-38 distinct lineages of Recent Neritimorpha, Caenogastropoda, and Heterobranchia (including the Pulmonata). The caenogastropod component dominates species richness and variety of shape, physiology, life, and reproductive strategies, resulting in multiple highly speciose endemic radiations.

Understanding and Protecting the Slimy Critters

Despite their ecological significance in many aquatic habitats, our knowledge of their systematics is woefully inadequate.

The condition of the vast majority of species, on the other hand, is unknown, a situation aggravated by a scarcity of specialists and critical baseline data on distribution, abundance, basic life history, physiology, morphology, and food. As a result, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species' already enormous magnitude of extinction and high degrees of threat is very definitely an underestimate.