Two giant albino land snails were “lucky” to survive after they were abandoned by a previous owner.<\/p>\n
The pair were found in a vivarium that had been dumped in the bushes near Ingram Avenue in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.<\/p>\n
The food left for them was old, their water dish was upturned and the temperature had dropped far below the 20C the snails needed to survive.<\/p>\n
The RSPCA said the pair were now in the care of a reptile specialist in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, where they will be rehomed.<\/p>\n
The species’ usual habitat is among tropical wetlands and forests in sub-Saharan Africa, and because they are hermaphrodites, they can multiply quickly.<\/p>\n
They are not native to the UK, and it is illegal to release them or their eggs into the wild.<\/p>\n
RSPCA Inspector Malwina Gasiorek said: “This was quite an unusual find – but it is lucky they were discovered when they were, as they would not have survived much longer.<\/p>\n
“It is sad to think that these were once cared-for pets, who were simply dumped and left in a very vulnerable position.<\/p>\n
“As with all pets, it’s really important that anyone thinking of taking on a giant snail is aware of what is involved in taking care of them and do their research first.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two giant albino land snails were “lucky” to survive after they were abandoned by a previous owner. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-241900","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}