History’s Slowest Invasion

An alien species has been invading Britain for over 100 years, and they were just now noticed. They are snails!

For the past 110 years, a colony of snails has managed to crawl unnoticed from an imported stone balustrade brought from Italy in the 1890s, to claim a piece of British territory up to the terrace of the house just 27m (88ft) away.

A National Trust volunteer spotted the snails while cleaning some statues in the garden. It was the first time that anyone had realised that the Mediterranean mollusc had managed to establish a bridgehead into Britain – at the dizzy pace of about 25cm a year.

The snails are tiny, only about a centimeter in length. Link -via Digg