A fire snail could make you a millionaire, but it won't happen

Every lover of exotic pets has his own dream. For most snail breeders, it is the snail Platymma tweediei or the fiery hemiplect. This mollusk is found only in one place on the planet and it is incredibly difficult to find it, and even more so to bring it home. But many desperate heads still do not give up hope. The fact is that this exotic snail can make its owner a millionaire.

The fiery hemiplect is incredibly beautiful. It is a large, up to 20 cm long mollusk with a coal-black shell and a two-tone, black-scarlet body. Beautiful and at the same time threatening color, for which hemiplecta is also called a snail-dracula, nature gave her not in vain. The fire snail, unlike most of its relatives, is a predator.

Hemiplecta preys mainly on other mollusks and sedentary insects. She does not disdain her relatives, who happened to be nearby. In the event that the hunt did not go well, the snail does not starve. She calmly switches to the usual vegetarian diet for her relatives.

The lifestyle of Dracula snails, as it should be, is nocturnal. They are very secretive and prefer to avoid illuminated places at any time of the day. These animals masterfully hide in leaves and grass, hiding their bright body in a shell that looks like a black stone.

To get a chemiplect in your collection, you will have to go to Malaysia. There you will need to find a secluded mountainous area overgrown with jungle and spend several days, maybe weeks, there to find this endemic. At the same time, there is no guarantee that the fire snail will be detected.

But even after finding the fiery hemiplect, you will not be able to consider that your mission is completed. This amazing snail is protected by the laws of Malaysia and its export outside the country is punishable by imprisonment. A lucky person who has completed a dangerous quest and got the coveted creatures into his terrarium can enjoy the amazing colors of a huge snail and brag to other, less successful snail breeders.

What about millions? Yes, a fiery chemicplect can make a person rich who has managed to raise her offspring. Why grow it? Yes, it's very simple – these snails reproduce in captivity, but their babies die in the first days of their lives. Experienced specialists dealing with mollusks have not yet found ways to nurture the younger generation of snails.

They carefully selected the diet, temperature, humidity, light regime, but everything was in vain. There are still no ads for the sale of chemiplect on the forums of terrariumists. It's hard to even say how much a copy of a fire snail can cost, because there are simply no offers on the exotic wildlife market! But we can definitely say that connoisseurs of rare animals will pay a substantial amount for each snail.

On the one hand, it is good that hemiplecta cannot be bred in captivity. This reduces the number of people who want to get a rare animal for profit. But on the other hand, it may cost the survival of the entire species. Despite the fact that the snail lives in a remote jungle at an altitude of more than a kilometer, its population is rapidly declining.

The main enemies of the fire snail were, as you may have guessed, a man. In addition to poachers, the number of species is seriously affected by deforestation and the use of chemicals on farms. So those who do not give up and continue to try to breed fiery hemiplects are also fighting for the preservation of the species. When all the snails die in nature, their species will be interrupted along with the death of the last childless individual in captivity.

Only a couple of such snails live in Russia, but their offspring die every time. It is said that in Germany enthusiasts have managed to get viable offspring from snails, but there is no exact confirmation of this. Therefore, if you are not tempted by a ghostly chance to get rich, breed Goliath spiders. These arthropods reproduce well in captivity. Although they are inexpensive, they produce hundreds of babies.