Word: achatina
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...through Honolulu International Airport-never suspecting that he was lugging three brown-shelled snails. Soon after reaching home, his mother ordered him to toss the creatures into his backyard. What he tossed was an ecological bombshell. Innocently, the boy had introduced into the mainland U.S. a ferociously fertile predator: Achatina fulica, more commonly known as the giant African land snail...
State pest-controllers are mobilizing against the marching marauders, but they face an uphill fight. Achatina, whose body can grow as long as a foot, has so few natural enemies that it can roam almost anywhere. Plagued by other recent invaders-the Bufo toad from Central America and the Asian walking catfish-Florida biologists are reluctant to import any anti-snail predators, such as the India glowworm, the hermit crab, or even more Bufos, which are known to feed on the young snails. Instead, they have begun careful spraying with insecticide (granules of metaldehyde mixed with tricalcium arsenide...
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