Kris­tel-Marie Ram­nath

The Gi­ant African Snail “Lis­sachati­na fuli­ca” (pre­vi­ous­ly “Achati­na fuli­ca”) is a plant pest that was smug­gled in­to Trinidad in 2008 and has since spread to dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try over time. The Gi­ant African Snail is an alien in­va­sive species and is one of the world’s most de­struc­tive land snails. It is known to feed on 500 dif­fer­ent species of plants in­clud­ing many com­mer­cial­ly im­por­tant ones such as ba­nana, cab­bage, me­l­on­gene and pa­paya.

The Gi­ant African Snail is a known vec­tor of the rat lung­worm, a par­a­site that can cause a form of menin­gi­tis in hu­mans. The vec­tor is passed from snail to hu­man by con­tact with the snail’s mu­cus or by eat­ing im­prop­er­ly cooked snail meat. Live snails must not be han­dled with bare hands; wa­ter­proof gloves must be used.

The main dan­ger to dogs is the bait used to kill the snails: met­alde­hyde. Snail bait and snail poi­sons are read­i­ly avail­able in most gar­den sup­ply stores and pose a sig­nif­i­cant haz­ard to the pet dogs that share the gar­den. Just a small amount of met­alde­hyde con­sumed by a dog or oth­er an­i­mal can poi­son them, whether it is con­sumed di­rect­ly or by eat­ing a snail that has it­self con­sumed the bait. Snail bait is typ­i­cal­ly for­mu­lat­ed in pel­lets and flavoured with mo­lasses or bran to at­tract snails. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the pel­lets re­sem­ble kib­bled dog food and the mo­lasses and bran are al­so at­trac­tive to dogs. Snail baits are al­so avail­able as liq­uids and pow­ders that can get on­to paws and be licked off in nor­mal groom­ing.

Though less com­mon, the snails them­selves can al­so be dan­ger­ous to dogs just as they are to hu­mans, as they can pass on the po­ten­tial­ly fa­tal rat lung­worm par­a­site to dogs. In ad­di­tion, these snails have been found to car­ry sev­er­al oth­er par­a­sites dan­ger­ous to dogs and oth­er an­i­mals.

An­i­mals which have been im­pact­ed by met­alde­hyde poi­son­ing will ex­pe­ri­ence seizures or oth­er sim­i­lar types of shak­ing with a high fever. The on­set of this twitch­ing hap­pens quick­ly and can be seen in just min­utes. Oth­er symp­toms to look out for in­clude:

• Di­ar­rhoea

• Drowsi­ness

• Blue mu­cous mem­branes

• Drool­ing

• Pant­i­ng

• Rapid heart rate

• Un­con­trolled bow­el or uri­nary move­ment

• Vom­it­ing

As this poi­son­ing is in­cred­i­bly dan­ger­ous and fast-act­ing, any an­i­mal that has come in­to con­tact with met­alde­hyde should im­me­di­ate­ly go to a vet­eri­nary hos­pi­tal so that they can be­gin sup­port­ive care to man­age the symp­toms and give the dog their best chance of sur­vival. Liv­er fail­ure can oc­cur in some pa­tients ap­prox­i­mate­ly two to three days af­ter poi­son­ing, so liv­er en­zymes must be mon­i­tored by blood tests through­out the re­cov­ery pe­ri­od.

The use of snail baits con­tain­ing met­alde­hyde should be avoid­ed in any area that can be ac­cessed by pets. Snail bait prod­ucts con­tain­ing iron phos­phate in­stead of met­alde­hyde are con­sid­ered safer for pets. These baits are still po­ten­tial­ly tox­ic due to the iron con­tent, but much larg­er dos­es are re­quired to cause poi­son­ing. Pets should not have ac­cess to ar­eas where met­alde­hyde has been ap­plied, as some prod­ucts may re­main ac­tive in soil for sev­er­al weeks. Al­ways fol­low la­belled in­struc­tions for ap­pli­ca­tion.

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