12 ms·

Jeremy the Lefty Snail Is Dead, but His Offspring Are All Right

176 points by elijahparker 9y ago

matt4077 9y ago
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!"
- azernik 9y ago
  The kind of research the Ig Nobel prizes were made for.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  Anyone care to explain this to a layman from the colonies.
  - BjoernKW 9y ago
    It’s a reference to Jeremy Corbyn, current leader of both Labour and Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
gus_massa 9y ago
> 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 9y ago
  > 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 9y ago
    >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 9y ago
      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 9y ago
        >>> 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
daveguy 9y ago
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.
- userbinator 9y ago
  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. My wild guess, based on only a primitive knowledge of genetics and with analogy to computing, is that although DNA is highly "error-corrected", very very rarely this fails and a "bit flip" that reverses the shell goes through uncorrected.
- leoc 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    Holy crap, it's the dude from Half Life 2!
- tzahola 9y ago
  It can be that multiple independent recessive mutations can cause leftyness. So if the parents don’t have the same lefty-genes, then the offspring will merely be carriers, but will look normal.
FuckOffNeemo 9y ago
I and Jeremy have (Dextro Cardia w/) Situs Inversus in common :).
duncan_bayne 9y ago
I actually thought from the headline that the article would be about Jeremy Corbyn. Turned out to be much more interesting :)
- unfunco 9y ago
  It was named after Jeremy Corbyn because it's a lefty. Other sources have mentioned it (Gizmodo, for instance).
  - duncan_bayne 9y ago
    Hah! Love it :) That's the sort of honour politicians should aim for.
kpil 9y ago
Lovely pun in the headline.
doener 9y ago
I had to read through the middle of the second paragraph to realize that this is not about politics.
tim333 9y ago
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/coiling.html http://www.molluscs.at/gastropoda/index.html?/gastropoda/coi...
- SeanDav 9y ago
  > "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 9y ago
    That's kind of what I meant. Spiral out to the right is kind another way of saying of bulges out to the right.
Quequau 9y ago
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/jeremy-the-lonely-left-twisting-snail-dies-but-knows-love-before-the-end http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/10/13/557652159/...
- vardump 9y ago
  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
youdontknowtho 9y ago
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...
bitwize 9y ago
Jeremy is a they/them. Snails are nonbinary, you shitlords.
moron4hire 9y ago
> 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.

176 points by elijahparker 9y ago

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!"

azernik 9y ago
The kind of research the Ig Nobel prizes were made for.
TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
Anyone care to explain this to a layman from the colonies.
- BjoernKW 9y ago
  It’s a reference to Jeremy Corbyn, current leader of both Labour and Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

gus_massa 9y ago

> 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 9y ago
> 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 9y ago
  >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 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      >>> 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

daveguy 9y ago

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.

userbinator 9y ago
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. My wild guess, based on only a primitive knowledge of genetics and with analogy to computing, is that although DNA is highly "error-corrected", very very rarely this fails and a "bit flip" that reverses the shell goes through uncorrected.
leoc 9y ago
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 9y ago
  Holy crap, it's the dude from Half Life 2!
tzahola 9y ago
It can be that multiple independent recessive mutations can cause leftyness. So if the parents don’t have the same lefty-genes, then the offspring will merely be carriers, but will look normal.

FuckOffNeemo 9y ago

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

duncan_bayne 9y ago

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

unfunco 9y ago
It was named after Jeremy Corbyn because it's a lefty. Other sources have mentioned it (Gizmodo, for instance).
- duncan_bayne 9y ago
  Hah! Love it :) That's the sort of honour politicians should aim for.

kpil 9y ago

Lovely pun in the headline.

doener 9y ago

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

tim333 9y ago

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/coiling.html http://www.molluscs.at/gastropoda/index.html?/gastropoda/coi...

SeanDav 9y ago
> "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 9y ago
  That's kind of what I meant. Spiral out to the right is kind another way of saying of bulges out to the right.

Quequau 9y ago

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

vardump 9y ago
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

youdontknowtho 9y ago

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...

bitwize 9y ago

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

moron4hire 9y ago

> 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.