Latest news with #snails
Top Gear
03-07-2025
- Automotive
- Top Gear
Life with an old Porsche 911 GT3 RS: how should you protect the paint?
Ricci's Garage In an unexpected move, Mark has decided to look after one of his cars... specifically, the 991 Skip 3 photos in the image carousel and continue reading Renowned photographer Mark has been working with TopGear for many, many years. When not taking photos he's buying inappropriate cars. Here he shares his addiction with the world In a very rare turn of events, I've spent this month doing something quite sensible: I've decided to look after one of the cars I already own. A few years ago I bought a 991 GT3 RS. Within three months I took great pride in doubling its mileage and using it for every journey possible, be that the school run or taking the dog to the vet, which does require popping out the fire extinguisher first. Advertisement - Page continues below There was also once where my daughter left her coat in the footwell after going to the park. This in itself wasn't an issue, however the several snails she'd picked up and placed in her pockets later would be. This only came to light the following day when several trails were spotted across the dashboard, something Porsche's R&D department never factored in. I never found those snails, but it did provide a necessary wake-up call that I should probably look after the RS a bit better. Over that time several wheels were now chipped, the paint had to be corrected and the interior – aside from harbouring snails – was becoming quite scuffed. Before I could do any further damage, I looked into the world of PPF (paint protective film) to see if it would be worth the cost in the long run. I've never had any PPF on any car before, and my only past experience was seeing god awful installs that resembled clingfilm being used rather than protective film. You might like After a bit of research I settled on a company called XPEL for a few key reasons. Firstly, it's been around for a very long time – 1997 in fact – and as such it's built up a decent selection of products depending on what budget and what kind of protection you're after. But what really impressed me with XPEL is the huge range of car makes and models it has on file. Rather than drape a gigantic sheet of film over a car and hope for the best, XPEL has templates stored within its database specific to individual cars that allows individual panels to be cut and wrapped with minimal waste. Not only does this save money by cutting down the amount of film needed, but it also provides a much cleaner look as each panel's protective film is precisely cut to shape making it incredibly difficult to spot whether it's even had PPF applied. Advertisement - Page continues below For my GT3, I settled on XPEL's Ultimate Plus range which boasts more features than just protection against paint damage. The film also protects against UV exposure, but also contaminants like bird muck that will actually burn into your paintwork if not removed leaving long term damage. It will also 'heal' itself apparently, which is activated by the sun's heat meaning it'll actively reduce swirl marks and light scratches on the film every time it's heated up. PPF is a bit like buying decent tyres for your car. It's not always the most exciting thing to spend money on, nor is it immediately noticeable. But it's also one of those things which should – touch wood – save you more money in the long term than the initial cost. I know I can't be trusted to properly look after any car I own, so having XPEL do a lot of that hard work for me does give me some peace of mind. Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Look out for your regular round-up of news, reviews and offers in your inbox. Get all the latest news, reviews and exclusives, direct to your inbox.
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Garden slugs and snails could now be considered venomous, study finds
Common garden snails and slugs could now be considered venomous, according to scientists. In a study that shakes up the definition of venom, researchers explain it is not just the bites of snakes and spiders that are classed as venomous, but also the saliva of aphids and the chemicals released by slugs. This change in definition will mean that tens of thousands of additional species could now be considered venomous. According to the research, published in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, substances like saliva all function with the same evolutionary function in mind: to manipulate another organism's body against its interests. The paper, led by the Natural History Museum's venom expert Dr Ronald Jenner, argues that venom should be redefined as any internally delivered secretion that one organism uses to make a physiological change in another living organism. This means that insects such as cicadas, aphids and shield bugs - which suck the sap of plants and inject toxic secretions to disable plant defences - and garden snails and slugs, which use toxins to manipulate their sexual mates, join the ranks of snakes and scorpions that use venom on prey. Dr Jenner said: 'This redefinition helps us understand venom not as a narrow weapon, but as a widespread evolutionary strategy. 'If you look at what the proboscis of a mosquito does when it's in your skin, it injects toxins that suppress the immune system so that the animal can safely take a blood meal without being swatted away. On a molecular level it shows a lot of similarities to what happens when a viper bites, say, a bunny. 'Conceptually they work on exactly the same system: a conflict arena between two organisms that is mediated by injected toxins. And that's venom.' Researchers also found the venom in wasps, bees and ants, as well as bugs and aphids, were originally used on plants rather than animals. Slugs and snails also inject potential partners with toxins during sexual courtship. Examples range from snails that shoot love-darts coated with bioactive molecules to manipulate their partners against their interest, to male blowflies whose barbed phallus injects a secretion that prevents females from mating again. These sexual secretions, the researchers argue, also fit their definition of venom because substances are internally delivered to manipulate the recipient in a conflict of evolutionary interests. The authors hope this redefinition could mean that scientists from traditionally separate fields can combine forces to accelerate understanding of venom biology.
The Independent
23-06-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Garden slugs and snails could now be considered venomous, study finds
Common garden snails and slugs could now be considered venomous, according to scientists. In a study that shakes up the definition of venom, researchers explain it is not just the bites of snakes and spiders that are classed as venomous, but also the saliva of aphids and the chemicals released by slugs. This change in definition will mean that tens of thousands of additional species could now be considered venomous. According to the research, published in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, substances like saliva all function with the same evolutionary function in mind: to manipulate another organism's body against its interests. The paper, led by the Natural History Museum 's venom expert Dr Ronald Jenner, argues that venom should be redefined as any internally delivered secretion that one organism uses to make a physiological change in another living organism. This means that insects such as cicadas, aphids and shield bugs - which suck the sap of plants and inject toxic secretions to disable plant defences - and garden snails and slugs, which use toxins to manipulate their sexual mates, join the ranks of snakes and scorpions that use venom on prey. Dr Jenner said: 'This redefinition helps us understand venom not as a narrow weapon, but as a widespread evolutionary strategy. 'If you look at what the proboscis of a mosquito does when it's in your skin, it injects toxins that suppress the immune system so that the animal can safely take a blood meal without being swatted away. On a molecular level it shows a lot of similarities to what happens when a viper bites, say, a bunny. 'Conceptually they work on exactly the same system: a conflict arena between two organisms that is mediated by injected toxins. And that's venom.' Researchers also found the venom in wasps, bees and ants, as well as bugs and aphids, were originally used on plants rather than animals. Slugs and snails also inject potential partners with toxins during sexual courtship. Examples range from snails that shoot love-darts coated with bioactive molecules to manipulate their partners against their interest, to male blowflies whose barbed phallus injects a secretion that prevents females from mating again. These sexual secretions, the researchers argue, also fit their definition of venom because substances are internally delivered to manipulate the recipient in a conflict of evolutionary interests. The authors hope this redefinition could mean that scientists from traditionally separate fields can combine forces to accelerate understanding of venom biology.
The Guardian
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Endling by Maria Reva review – a Ukrainian caper upended by war
Maria Reva's dexterous and formally inventive debut novel is impossible to review without giving away a major surprise. I do this with a heavy heart: one of the pleasures of this book is the jaw‑dropping coup de théâtre that comes halfway through. Until that point, Endling offers its readers the pleasures of a more or less conventional novel. The central character is a misanthropic obsessive called Yeva who drives a converted campervan around the countryside of her native Ukraine, rescuing endangered snails. She's hoping to get them to breed, but some turn out to be endlings – the last living member of a species. First coined in the 1990s, the word was unknown to me before I read this book, but the tragic biological checkmate it describes is older than history. Aurochs, dodos, quaggas, mammoths and Tasmanian tigers must all have culminated in an endling. Instead of engendering new life, Yeva ends up being a hospice nurse for entire species as her charges become extinct. Her obsessive death-watch would be unbearably grim if it weren't so funny. Here she is, indignant at the way her beloved snails are overshadowed by more glamorous species: Snails weren't pandas – those oversize bumbling toddlers that sucked up national conservation budgets – or any of the other charismatic megafauna, like orcas or gorillas. Snails weren't huggy koala bears, which in reality were vicious and riddled with chlamydia. Nor were snails otters, which looked like plush toys made for mascots by aquariums, despite the fact that they lured dogs from beaches to drown and rape them. Bearing constant witness to annihilation, Yeva finds her mental health is hanging by a thread. She's also short of cash, so funds her mission by working for a company that runs so-called 'romance tours'. Still reeking of her grotty campervan, Yeva turns up to swell the numbers at events to which foreigners have been lured by the comically specious promises on the agency website: 'the secret of the Ukrainian Woman may be genetical. Invasions and wars led to fruity intermixing … Imagine an entire country of beautiful and lonely women! … This is where you, Western Man, enter.' It's through the marriage agency that Yeva encounters the two characters who catalyse the plot of the novel: sisters Nastia and Sol. Inspired by their mother, the founder of a group of feminist activists, they want to draw the world's attention to the patriarchal assumptions of the bridal industry. In order to do this, they're planning to kidnap some of the foreign bachelors and hold them hostage in Yeva's van. One of the bachelors, Vancouver-based Ukrainian émigré Pasha, completes the quartet of human characters at the novel's heart. Pasha has returned to the land of his birth not only to find love but in order to fulfil a vague sense of artistic destiny. For roughly 100 pages or so, Endling barrels along, effortlessly resonating with larger ideas, sustained by humour and a sharp and empathetic intelligence. The book is shaping up to be an engaging comic heist: an eastern European Coen brothers caper, inflected with a feminist sensibility. And then Russia launches its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The shock of this event is so huge that it doesn't just affect the lives of the characters, it breaks open the entire novel. It's like one of those moments in the theatre when someone shuffles on to the stage to share the news of a terrible event behind the scenes: a fire or a flood. The scale of this disruption is acknowledged formally in the book. Reva does the novelistic equivalent of running the credits. The story we're reading appears to conclude on page 136, complete with acknowledgments page, author biography and a note on the typeface. Then, overleaf, an alternative version of the novel resumes. We learn in this section that after the critical success of her first book, the short story collection Good Citizens Need Not Fear, the author began and then abandoned a version of Endling. 'Even in peacetime,' we overhear her telling her agent, 'I felt queasy leaning into not one but two Ukrainian tropes, 'mail-order brides' and topless protesters.' A Canadian citizen of Ukrainian descent, she finds herself struggling to write, stricken with guilt, worrying about her grandfather who is living near the frontline in Kherson. She's chastised by a ruthless inner voice that accuses her of opportunism. 'Fourteen dead, ninety-seven wounded. But don't let us interrupt. By all means, sink into those high-thread-count sheets. Tell us, Ms Voice of Ukraine, how do you toast in Ukrainian again?' Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion Rather than feeling distracting or tricksy, the intervention actually heightens the impact of the story, giving it a discomfiting intensity and a new, more intimate register. Something deepens in the relationship between reader and author. We all have skin in the game at this point. Sitting in the theatre, with the smell of smoke rising from behind the curtains, the reader wonders, among other things, what on earth is going on? How is she going to pull this off? What's going to happen to the central characters? Are the Russians going to bomb all of us? In this second half of the book, we return to the story of Yeva, Nastia, Sol and Pasha, as it unfolds in the days after the invasion. A possible mate has been sighted for one of Yeva's lone snails. Yeva has to decide between driving the kidnapped bachelors to safety or heading towards Kherson and right into the path of the Russians. Given what's happened so far, it's not a surprise to learn that the book eschews the safe option. But now Reva has established a different kind of rapport with the reader and is able to intrude more directly into the narrative. She shares with us personal details about her connection with Ukraine, as well as her awareness of the war and the artistic challenge she faces: can anyone in good conscience make fiction out of these tragic events? Though not every element of the story is equally successful – I was left puzzled by the passivity of the kidnapped bachelors – the answer to that question is resoundingly affirmative. Endling by Maria Reva is published by Virago (£20). To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
RNZ News
15-06-2025
- General
- RNZ News
DOC spends hundreds of thousands to care for snails after mining destroys home
Powelliphanta augusta snails and eggs. Photo: Lisa Flanagan/DOC Two thousand giant snails are living in fridges on the West Coast as an insurance policy for the Department of Conservation, which has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on their care and restoring their environment-turned-coal mine. The Department of Conservation (DOC) has managed this captive population of Powelliphanta augusta since 2006, when the former state mining company Solid Energy took over their habitat on the Mt Augustus ridgeline on the western side of the Stockton Plateau, near Westport. Solid Energy collapsed in 2015 , after falling coal prices left it unable to pay almost $400 million of debt. Bathurst Resources now owns the mine, and the captive population of snails in DOC's care is now just under 2000, kept in containers with leaf matter in a temperature-controlled room in Hokitika. An Official Information Act request submitted by the Taxpayers' Union shows DOC has spent more than $411,000 in the past four years on their housing and management, including staff costs. But the Taxpayers' Union's investigations coordinator Rhys Hurley said this was a poor use of public money, and the scheme "shows the ridiculousness of the system". "It drains DOC funding away from other species, is unaccountable and offers little evidence of success," he said. The Department of Conservation (DOC) has managed this captive population of Powelliphanta augusta since 2006. Photo: Lucy Holyoake/DOC But DOC's principal advisor for biodiversity Hilary Aikman said those costs were "really reasonable", and on-par with what the department would spend on any other critically endangered species. She had just returned from a "very wet but fascinating trip" to Stockton this past week. "The idea is that [the captive snails] provide us with an insurance population while we understand how they've adapted to the areas where they were released that were away from their original habitat," Aikman said. The snails' original habitat had measured only 10 hectares, almost all of which had been converted into the mine. The bits no longer in use were now being revegetated, with plants being brought in from nearby areas to try and recreate a habitat for these snails to be released into. Some snails had survived in the wild and lived on around the mine, but up to 10,000 snails and eggs had been reintroduced to those areas from the captive population. It was a slow process, Aikman said, as the species was slow to mature - some in captivity had reached up to 30-years-old. "We are being somewhat cautious, making sure that they're surviving before we let more out of captivity, but that is because they're critically endangered, they're as rare as the kākāpō, and they're unique to New Zealand." Aikman said one of the benefits to having a captive population was the opportunity to learn more about the species. Most of the revegetation work was being undertaken by Bathurst, who now ran the mine. Photo: Lucy Holyoake/DOC Last month, DOC ranger Lisa Flanagan, who had been looking after the snails in Hokitika for more than 12 years, filmed an egg being laid - something that never would have captured in the wild. Not all of the cost of the species' survival had been shouldered by DOC. "The majority of the money to keep the captive population going came as part of the permitting permissions for Solid Energy when they were first set up," Aikman said. "That was part of the agreement - if you remove the habitat, this is what we need to do." And most of the revegetation work was being undertaken by Bathurst, which now ran the mine. "We feel that the costs we are spending on them, and we've spent a little bit more recently on supplementing some of the planting to help with the restoration, but we feel that those costs are really reasonable for a critically endangered species, and are quite in-line with what we spend on other critically endangered species." She said they had begun to limit the breeding of snails for which they already had plenty of genetic material, but allowing others with rarer traits to continue, to increase the diversity of the population. According to the OIA, in 2023/24, $85,000 had been spent on a population genetics study to reveal the existing level of diversity. Aikman said the goal was to release most, if not all of the snails over the next five years. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
