An Internet search suggests the rosy wolfsnail can reach almost 20 miles per hour, highlighting how mistakes can easily be amplified by search engines.Credit: Rhododendrites (CC BY-SA 4.0)
As snails go, the rosy wolfsnail (Euglandina rosea) is a perfect predator. An invasive species in Hawaii, French Polynesia and a number of other islands in the Pacific and Indian Ocean, the wolfsnail has hunted at least eight other snail species to extinction in Hawaii alone. It has probably caused many more extinctions in places where it has been introduced; one study1 suggested it was “highly probable” that it was responsible for more than 100 extinctions of mollusc species in the wider Pacific.
It’s easy to be hyperbolic about the rosy wolfsnail. But perhaps not as hyperbolic as Google’s search engine which, at the time of writing, informs users that the wolfsnail’s top speed is roughly 19 miles
