Wanna help scientists unravel a mystery while also helping a snail named Jeremy find true love?

Of course you do, you're not cold and heartless.

I'm Anna Rothschild and this is Gross Science.

Scientist in the UK have found a brown garden snail with a shell that spirals counterclockwise.

Now, why is this remarkable?

Well, most snails of the species Cornu aspersum have shells that spiral clockwise from the center.

There's probably only a one in a hundred thousand to a one in a million chance that a snail will be born with a shell spiralling the other way.

Researchers have gotten so excited about this that they've given the snail a name-it's Jeremy.

And they think Jeremy might help us uncover some secrets about how our bodies develop.

Specifically, how we become asymmetrical.

So, you might be saying to yourself, "what do you mean asymmetrical?

I'm pretty symmetrical."

And you're right... at least from the outside.

If you folded me in half lengthwise, my right and left sides would roughly overlap.

But internally, it's a different story.

Our organs are not positioned symmetrically from left to right-for example, your spleen's on the left side of your body, while your liver's more on the right.

According to Dr. Angus Davison, a scientist at the University of Nottingham who studies asymmetry, and who also happens to be Jeremy's current owner, there's a good reason that we're inwardly asymmetrical.

It's likely because otherwise it would just be difficult to pack all our organs in in an efficient way.

But there's still a lot we don't understand about how our body determines left from right.

Some humans actually have a condition called "situs inversus," where all of their internal organs are flipped left to right.

For us, this inversion is pretty harmless-and most people with this condition have no idea they even have it!

But, brown garden snails actually show their asymmetry on the outside-both in the direction their shells spiral, and in the location of their genitals.

And that means that Jeremy's genitals are on the opposite side of the body as usual, making it impossible for Jeremy to mate with another normal brown garden snail.

Sad!

So Davison wants to find Jeremy another "lefty" snail so he can study their babies.

He wants to know if Jeremy's flipped body plan was caused by a heritable genetic mutation, or if there was just some sort of glitch, possible caused by the environment, that affected Jeremy's early development somehow.

And that's where you come in!

See, while brown garden snails are originally from Europe, they're now found all over the world-including in some parts of the US.

So, go out there and see if you can find another counterclockwise spiralling snail!

If you think you've found one, photograph it and post the picture on Twitter with the hashtag "snaillove," which Davison will be following.

If it's actually a "lefty" snail, you can mail it to Davison and be part of this great science experiment.

Now get escargot-ing.

Happy slime trails!

Ew.