
Jeremy the Lefty Snail Is Dead, but His Offspring Are All Right - elijahparker
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/science/jeremy-lefty-snail.html
======
matt4077
This is quite a feat of scientific depth meets subtle snark meets parody of
British quirkiness. It perfectly captures how the story itself makes you think
both "that's silly" and "of course they'd do that, they're scientists!"

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Anyone care to explain this to a layman from the colonies.

~~~
BjoernKW
It’s a reference to Jeremy Corbyn, current leader of both Labour and Her
Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition.

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Quequau
Surely we shouldn't be discussing this without the benefit of the musical
accompaniment created in his honour:

[http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2017/10/13/557652159/...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2017/10/13/557652159/jeremy-the-lonely-left-twisting-snail-dies-but-knows-
love-before-the-end)

~~~
vardump
Maybe Jeremy would have preferred to be remembered more like this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4QAnCFd4iw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4QAnCFd4iw)

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FuckOffNeemo
I and Jeremy have (Dextro Cardia w/) Situs Inversus in common :).

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tim333
As someone puzzled what left vs right meant in the nyt article its that the
coils are not symetrical but bulge out to one side
[http://www.molluscs.at/gastropoda/index.html?/gastropoda/coi...](http://www.molluscs.at/gastropoda/index.html?/gastropoda/coiling.html)

~~~
SeanDav
> _" As someone puzzled what left vs right meant in the nyt article its that
> the coils are not symetrical but bulge out to one side "_

I don't think that is the explanation. Looking at Jeremy head on, you can see
his shell spirals out to his left (our right) - with other snails, the shell
spirals out to their right, as you can clearly see on the baby snail crawling
on Jeremy in the initial article photo and also in another photo, where Jeremy
is crawling on top of another snail (There is probably a joke in there
somewhere!)

~~~
tim333
That's kind of what I meant. Spiral out to the right is kind another way of
saying of bulges out to the right.

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youdontknowtho
Did anyone else start off by thinking that this was some kind of snarky think
piece about Jeremy Corbyn? Maybe I'm watching too much news...

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moron4hire
> Jeremy had been sluggish since February...

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that Jeremy, who was a snail,
exhibited slug-like tendencies much longer than just February.

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gus_massa
> _Jeremy won international fame for a mutation that caused his shell to coil
> left instead of right. For years, people searched for another lefty snail
> with which he could mate. Shortly before his death, she was found._

Since most of the snails (all?) are hermaphrodites isn't this use of "he" and
"she" wrong? (or at least misleading?)

> _All of the babies were born with a right-handed shell. This means the gene
> causing a snail’s directional twist (and body asymmetry in other animals),
> described last year in Current Biology, could take more than a generation
> for its recessive form to appear._

This doesn't make any sense. Is the left handled shell caused by a recessive
gene? If this were the case, the offspring of two left handled snails should
be also left handled. Is it possible that this was not caused by a genetic
mutation, and it's just that a tiny amount of normal snails get the wrong
orientation?

~~~
KGIII
> the wrong direction?

Sure, flaunting your snail privilege! /s

But, seriously, maybe it starts off really small and is a conservation of
angular momentum thing, sort of like how most solar bodies orbit
counterclockwise?

Only really small and, well, probably pretty slow. Something like a small
grain of sand could maybe make it spin the other way?

Do keep in mind that I'm a mathematician. I haven't actually taken a bio
course since about 1983.

~~~
avip
>maybe it starts off really small and is a conservation of angular momentum
thing

Being a mathematician does not imply you can get away with saying something
that makes so little sense :)

~~~
KGIII
Pfft... Does too!

I seriously wonder if it's something like a lump of skin or dirt that makes it
go the opposite direction, or the direction of least resistance. Y'all busy
looking at genes and stuff. I am gonna stick with simple.

It should be noted that my last bio course was well before the human genome
was sequenced. I doubt they'd even done snails.

Yeah, I'm sticking with that. It's either that or aliens.

~~~
gus_massa
>>> _conservation of angular momentum thing_

For the snails, probably you mean something like "initial break of symmetry".

In the initial steps of the embryo, it must define the front-back, top-down,
right-left axis. (I'm not sure about the technical names.) IIRC, each one is
defined by some gradient of chemical signal, they are not mechanical, but I'm
not sure.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphogenesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphogenesis)

Anyway, it would be a nice experiment to twist a snail embryo and see the
development. In particular, the snail of the article has the reproductive and
internal organs in the opposite side of most snails. What happens when you
twist a snail embryo, do the internal organs get the mirrored position too???

Somewhat related: This explains some parts of the front-back axis "Evo-Devo
(Despacito Biology Parody) | A Capella Science"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydqReeTV_vk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydqReeTV_vk)

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doener
I had to read through the middle of the second paragraph to realize that this
is not about politics.

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kpil
Lovely pun in the headline.

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duncan_bayne
I actually thought from the headline that the article would be about Jeremy
Corbyn. Turned out to be much more interesting :)

~~~
unfunco
It was named after Jeremy Corbyn because it's a lefty. Other sources have
mentioned it (Gizmodo, for instance).

~~~
duncan_bayne
Hah! Love it :) That's the sort of honour politicians should aim for.

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daveguy
Yuk yuk yuk. Offspring are _all right_. Very interesting though. 300
offspring, both parents left-y, but all offspring right-y. It seems curious
that left-y is so rare and according to the article additional genetic studies
are needed before the left-y cause is determined. Maybe it isn't genetic, but
a rare quirk of development.

I was wondering why right-y is so prominent, but if there are physical
limitations during mating between left vs right then one would naturally
emerge. No mentions of alternate snail species in the article with left-y
shells, but apparently left vs right shells are distinguishing features of
gastropods (land and sea snails).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastropod_shell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastropod_shell)

An interesting natural constraint on design. Edit: and by design I mean
constraint on emergence / naturally restrained emergence, not some externally
imposed design.

~~~
leoc
At least he had his wish to die before he got froze. And just in case anyone
is missing the joke in the choice of name,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Corbyn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Corbyn)
.

~~~
sandebert
Holy crap, it's the dude from Half Life 2!

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bitwize
Jeremy is a they/them. Snails are nonbinary, you shitlords.

