Newly Discovered Snail Species Named After Studio Ghibli Co-Founder Is A Hairy Beauty

Currently, the Lagocheilus genus of snails contains 106 species that are widespread across much of south east Asia, India, and South China. Of these 106 species, only six are known from mainland India and the understanding of the snails in the Western Ghats region is largely poor due to large parts of the area having never been explored. From this area, the team found a new land-snail species from Ratoba Point, Tilari Nagar, Kolhapur District, Maharashtra, with some rather unusual features. 

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The team collected 12 specimens from the area and photographed them so that the images could be compared with images of other species from elsewhere in India and Sri Lanka. The new species has been named Lagocheilus hayaomiyazakii, which honors Hayao Miyazaki, the co-founder of the Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli. The common name suggested is the Tilari hairy snail.

To tell apart the new species from others in the genus is a relatively easy feat, explain the authors of the paper, because of “the shape of aperture, which has a pointed apex in the new species but is rounded in all the other species.”

In the young adults and juveniles of this species, the snail also had lots of hairs on the outer surface of its shell. These hairs could serve multiple functions, including camouflage or even to reduce shell damage when falling. The hairs could also trap and transport pollen or seeds around the forest floor, performing an ecosystem function. 

The species is currently only known from the area where it was found, and it was discovered covered in mud, making it a little tricky to see. However, it represents the first-ever record of this species from the northern Western Ghats and extends the range of the genus by 540 kilometers (335 miles). 

Given that the area of the Western Ghats is little explored, the team think that there could be other new species out there waiting to be discovered. They also suggest that taxonomic revision of the group would be useful to further understand the relationships between this grouping of snails. 

The paper is published in the Journal of Conchology.