The Race to Save a Tiny, Fuzzy Snail From Dying Out Forever

Deep in a small patch of rainforest on Norfolk Island, a tiny snail covered in golden hairs is fighting to survive. The Norfolk Island hairy snail is so rare that scientists can find it in only one spot on Earth — a patch of forest about the size of two parking spaces. In August, a team of scientists and zookeepers flew to the island to rescue the last remaining snails before they went extinct forever.

The hairy snail, known by its scientific name Fanulena imitatrix, is smaller than your pinky fingernail. Its shell is only about seven millimetres wide — that's less than a centimetre. Tiny hairs grow out from the ribs of its shell, giving it a fuzzy, golden look that makes it unlike almost any other snail in the world.

Dr. Isabel Hyman is a scientist from the Australian Museum who studies snails for a living. She says the hairs may help the snail move around in very wet places, though researchers are still not completely sure. Her eyes light up when she talks about the little creature and its beautiful golden hairs.

The snail lives under the bark of fallen branches and logs on the forest floor in Selwyn Reserve. This reserve is on the western side of Norfolk Island, which is a small rocky island about 1,500 kilometres east of Australia. The snail has never been found anywhere else on the planet.

Sadly, the hairy snail is in serious trouble. Feral rats and wild chickens eat the snails, and invasive Argentine ants have moved into the snail's home. A pesticide used to kill the ants can also harm the snails, and climate change is making the habitat drier, which is bad for a creature that needs moisture to survive.

The number of hairy snails has been falling fast. Scientists counted 68 live snails in August last year, but by May of this year, only four were found alive. The number of empty shells kept growing, which told scientists that more and more snails were dying.

A bigger, more careful search was done in late July by a team that included a park ranger, a university researcher, and a zookeeper from Taronga Zoo. They found just 24 live snails in about two hours. That result alarmed the team and pushed them to act quickly.

Within a month, Dr. Hyman and Taronga zookeeper Tarryn Williams Clow were on a plane to Norfolk Island to collect snails for a special breeding program. A breeding program is when scientists bring animals into a safe place and help them have babies so their species doesn't die out. This kind of rescue mission is called a mercy dash — a fast trip taken to save something in danger.

The team had done something like this before with another rare Norfolk Island snail, using a breeding program at Taronga Zoo from 2021 to 2025. That project took years of careful work to make sure the snails could survive and reproduce in a zoo setting. Williams Clow said the team was very cautious because those snails were also among the last of their kind.

This time, the team also collected about 20 snails of a closely related species to use as surrogates — stand-ins that let zookeepers practice before making changes for the rarer hairy snails. Williams Clow said these surrogate snails are like little guinea pigs who will help the team figure out the best way to care for the endangered species. This approach lets the team experiment with lower risk to the hairy snails.

Good news came in late August, when the team found 73 hairy snails in a fuller survey — far more than they had found the month before. Nearly two weeks later, Williams Clow brought 30 hairy snails back to Taronga Zoo for the breeding program. She said all the snails have settled in well and have already started giving birth to live young.

Norfolk Island is an important hotspot for land snails, with about 60 unique species found there, many of which live nowhere else on Earth. The hairy snail belongs to a group of six original species found only on the island, and three of those are already extinct. Dr. Hyman says snails like these help break down dead leaves and provide food for other animals, making them a vital part of the island's ecosystem.