Giant Snails in Barbados

Allaby Small, 66, shows a dead African snail at his home in the rural parish of St. George, central Barbados, Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2006. A breed of giant, ravenous snails that first appeared in Barbados six years ago is thriving on the tropical island, destroying crops and prompting calls for the government to eliminate the slimy pests. Small, who has started lighting bonfires a few nights a week to kill the snails encroaching on his house, said he worries they will find a way under his roof and infest his home. AP Photo/CHRIS BRANDIS

Barbados fights giant snail invasion

A nocturnal survey last weekend found hundreds of thousands of African snails - which are often about the size of a human hand - swarming the central parish of St. George, the country's agricultural heartland, where farmers complained of damage to sugar cane, bananas, papayas and other crops.

"We saw snails riding on each other's backs and moving in clusters," said David Walrond, chairman of the local emergency response office that organized 60 volunteers for the expedition. "You're just crunching the shells as you're walking through."

...The snails are known to consume as many as 500 different plants and can transmit meningitis and other diseases through their mucous.

"At present the snail is regarded as an agricultural pest, but in other parts of the world it is also a very important public health pest," said Ian Gibbs, a government entomologist.

Walrond said his group aims to help the country avert an ecological disaster. Beyond threatening the food supply, he said the snails can lead to an increase in the populations of rats, which prey on the fast-multiplying creatures, and mosquitoes, which breed in water that collects in shells of dead snails.

The turban-shaped snails can grow as long as 8 to 10 inches (20 to 25 centimeters) and about 3 to 4 inches (8 to 10 centimeters) wide, but most aren't quite that big.