How Do You Solve an Extinction Mystery? Put a Tiny Computer on a Snail.

An unlikely collaboration has solved a longstanding snail survival mystery in the Society Islands in French Polynesia.

In 2017, a rosy wolf snail crawled along a sunlit trail in Tahiti with an unexpected passenger: a bespoke computer the size of an aphid, screwed delicately on its shell like a top hat. This particular species of snail is implicated in the extinctions of as many as 134 snail species worldwide. People introduced the carnivorous rosy wolf snail to Tahiti decades ago, and the predatory species left few survivors. But one Tahitian species managed to survive in dozens of valleys on the island: the tiny yogurt-colored snail Partula hyalina. “There must be something special about them,” said Cindy Bick, a researcher at the University of Michigan.