摘要：If you thought your dating pool was limited, spare a thought for Ned, a very rare snail unearthed in New Zealand. Due to a left-sp

New Zealand launches campaign to find love for rare and lonely left-spiralling snail Ned

新西兰发起活动，

为稀有而孤独的

左螺旋蜗牛Ned寻找爱情

Nearly all common garden snails have shells that coil to the right but Ned the snail’s left-spiralling shell results in reversed reproductive organs – a barrier to mating

几乎所有常见的花园蜗牛的壳都是向右卷曲的，但蜗牛 Ned 的壳是向左卷曲的，导致生殖器官反向，从而阻碍了交配

Wed 27 Aug 2025 04.24 BST

2025年8月27日星期三 04.24 BST

If you thought your dating pool was limited, spare a thought for Ned, a very rare snail unearthed in New Zealand. Due to a left-spiralling shell, Ned has a vanishingly small chance of finding a mate – a predicament that has sparked a nationwide campaign.

如果你觉得自己的伴侣选择有限，不妨想想新西兰出土的珍稀蜗牛“内德”（Ned ）。由于其蜗壳呈左旋，内德找到伴侣的几率微乎其微——这一困境引发了一场全国性的寻找伴侣的活动。

Nearly all common garden snails have shells that coil to the right but Ned’s left-spiralling shell is like a mirror image, resulting in a flipped shell and reversed reproductive organs – a configuration that affects roughly 1 in 40,000 snails.

几乎所有常见的花园蜗牛的壳都是向右盘绕的，但 Ned 的壳却是向左盘绕的，就像镜像一样，导致壳翻转，生殖器官也颠倒——大约每 40,000 只蜗牛中就会有 1 只出现这种情况。

Snails with shells and reproductive organs on the opposite side cannot mate with each other, so unless another similarly built snail is found, Ned will be forced to live a life of celibacy.

壳和生殖器官位于另一侧的蜗牛无法相互交配，因此，除非找到另一只体型相似的蜗牛，否则内德将被迫过上独身生活。

Ned – named after The Simpson’s famous left-handed neighbour Ned Flanders – was discovered last week in a back garden in Wairarapa, an hour north of Wellington.

内德 (Ned) 的名字取自辛普森一家著名的左撇子邻居内德·弗兰德斯 (Ned Flanders)。上周，人们在惠灵顿以北一小时车程的怀拉拉帕 (Wairarapa) 的一个后花园里发现了它。

Illustrator and author Giselle Clarkson was digging up vegetables in her garden when a snail dropped into the dirt. She was about to toss it away when she noticed something was a bit off.

插画家兼作家吉赛尔·克拉克森（Giselle Clarkson）正在自家花园挖蔬菜，突然一只蜗牛掉进了泥土里。她正要把它扔掉，却发现有些不对劲。

“Something was different but I couldn’t figure it out – the first thought that went through my mind was that it was a different species,” she tells the Guardian. She soon realised that the snail’s shell coiled on the left.

她告诉《卫报》：“感觉有些不对劲，但我就是想不通——我脑子里闪过的第一个念头就是，这是另一个物种。” 她很快意识到，蜗牛的壳在左边卷曲着。

“After you see something thousands and thousands of times looking one way, and then you suddenly see it the other way around, it is quite uncanny.”

“当你用一种方式看过某样东西成千上万次之后，你突然用另一种方式看它，这真是太不可思议了。”

Clarkson had become familiar with left-spiralling snails through her work at New Zealand Geographic magazine and immediately knew she was dealing with something special.

克拉克森在新西兰地理杂志工作期间熟悉了左旋螺旋蜗牛，她立刻意识到自己正在处理一种特殊的东西。

She made Ned a home in a fishbowl and contacted the magazine with her find. They have since launched a national campaign to find Ned a mate.

她把内德安置在一个鱼缸里，并联系了杂志社，告诉他们她的发现。之后，他们发起了一场全国性的活动，为内德寻找伴侣。

The campaign urges people in New Zealand to rummage around their gardens and parks for left-coiled snails, and asks anyone who is lucky enough to find one to get in touch.

该活动呼吁新西兰民众在自家花园和公园里寻找左旋蜗牛，并恳请任何有幸找到的人与我们联系。

Ned may be rare, but his plight is not the first to garner attention. In 2017, an international search was launched to find a mate for Jeremy, another lonely lefty discovered in London. Two eligible left-sided mates were discovered but made headlines when they ended up coupling with each other instead. Jeremy eventually mated with one of the pair and produced offspring with exclusively right-spiralling shells, before dying, aged two.

奈德或许很罕见，但他的困境并非第一个引起关注的案例。2017年，一项国际搜寻活动启动，旨在为在伦敦发现的另一只孤独的左旋蜗牛杰里米寻找配偶。两只符合条件的左旋蜗牛伴侣被发现，但最终却彼此结合，这引起了媒体的关注。杰里米最终与其中一只交配，产下了壳均为右旋的后代，但在两岁时去世。

Ned is a common garden snail, an introduced species that is considered a pest in New Zealand’s gardens. Some gardeners may raise their eyebrows at trying to boost their population – even if it is by just a handful – but the campaign has a broader purpose.

内德是一种常见的花园蜗牛，是一种外来物种，在新西兰的花园中被视为害虫。一些园丁可能会对试图增加其数量的做法表示不满——即使只是增加一点点——但这项活动有着更广泛的目的。

“We’re all about trying to connect people with the environment,” said Catherine Woulfe, New Zealand Geographic editor.

“我们致力于将人们与环境联系起来，”新西兰地理编辑凯瑟琳沃尔夫说。

“[It] is light and fun but we hope it’s also a doorway into deeper topics like gardening, understanding the natural world, and the weird intricacies of reproduction,” she said.

她说：“它轻松有趣，但我们希望它也能成为通向更深层次主题的大门，比如园艺、了解自然世界以及繁殖的奇怪复杂性。”

This month, a study revealed human connection to nature had declined by 60% in 200 years and introducing children to nature, as well as greening urban spaces were some of the best methods to help reverse the decline.

本月的一项研究表明，人类与自然的联系在 200 年内下降了 60%，让孩子接触大自然以及绿化城市空间是扭转这种下降趋势的最佳方法之一。

“For the last two nights my kids have happily put on their gumboots and head torches and spent half an hour pottering around the garden, snail-hunting in the dark,” Woulfe said. “That feels like a win.”

“过去两个晚上，我的孩子们都兴高采烈地穿上雨靴，戴着头灯，在花园里闲逛了半个小时，在黑暗中捉蜗牛，”沃尔夫说。“感觉就像赢了一样。”

来源：左右图史