Snail Graffitti
A B3ta newsletter post about a London artist who decorates snails with classical paintings reminded me of my misspent youth...

At the age of 9, I desperately wanted to be David Attenborough and I would conduct experiments upon the local wildlife and fill notebooks with "observations".

I decided to discover the migratory habits of snails by raiding my mothers multitude of brightly coloured nail varnishes, collecting a collective of snails, painting their shells with varnish and releasing them at specific colour-co-ordinated distances away.

Suprisingly, many of them came back or were found by my mother and our neighbors for several years afterwards. I still do not know those polka dotted shelly beasts survived predation...
(Janitor Sinister, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 20:54, 4 replies)

Sounds like
A good experiment that I think wasn't stupid at all. Good work!
(FredrickPendragon found this post to be in very bad taste on:, Tue 29 Jul 2008, 6:52, closed)

the bright colours
could have fooled predators into thinking they were poisonous?
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 29 Jul 2008, 9:26, closed)

Nice
I'm thinking they may have survived predation because of the vivid markings.
Think 'wasps' and 'poison-arrow frogs', birds give them a wide berth.

Edit: Good thinking Vipros you beat me to it.
(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Tue 29 Jul 2008, 9:30, closed)

Well its decided then
To save Black Rhinos from poachers we shall paint them tartan!
( whenanimalsattackhumans clad in global hypercolour, Tue 29 Jul 2008, 12:30, closed)