Journal of Geek Studies

jgeekstudies.org

The giant snails of ARK: Survival Evolved

Rodrigo B. Salvador¹, Rafael M. Rosa², Fernanda S. Silva³ & Daniel C. Cavallari²

¹ Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand.

Email: [email protected]

² Faculdade de Filosoa, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto, Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil. Emails: rafaelmassonro-

[email protected]; [email protected]

³ Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil.

Email: [email protected]

ARK: Survival Evolved

is a survival game,

as one could expect by its title. It was devel-

oped by Studio Wildcard, in collaboration

with three other studios, and was launched

in its nished form in August 2017. Back

then, the game was available on Xbox One,

PlayStation 4, and the usual computer op-

erating systems. ARK was later released for

Android, iOS, and the Nintendo Switch.

The game was received by lukewarm

reviews at best: its Metascore is 70 for PCs,

and 69 for both PlayStation 4 and XboxOne

(Metacritic, 2020).

However, through the

course of three years and four expansions,

the game managed to secure a loyal set of

fans and achieve a state of “sustainable rev-

enue” (Batchelor, 2019). As of June 2020, the

game had a total of 35 million installs, of

which half is estimated to come from mo-

bile platforms (Desatoff, 2020).

Figure 1. Artwork for ARK: Survival Evolved. Source:

ARK’s press kit.

ARK can be played from both rst- and

third-person perspectives, where the play-

ers explore an open-world environment.

The game is action-oriented, with plenty

of harvesting and crafting activities. The

players’ goal is to survive and prosper in

the game world, called ‘Ark’, while facing

natural hazards and dangerous animals,

the most dangerous of which are likely the

other players. Most creatures found in the

game were based on real animals, typically

extinct ones, like non-avian dinosaurs (Fig.

1). As biologists, we are, of course, not in-

terested in those mainstream gargantuan

beasts. Rather, we are drawn to another gi-

ant of more modest proportions: the giant

snail.

ARK’S GIANT SNAILS

Let us start by taking a look at ARK’s

giant snail, called ‘Achatina’.

In fact, the

“species” received a mock Latin scientif-

ic name in the game: Achatina limusegnis.

Typically, a scientic name is accompanied

by the name of the scientist(s) who rst

described it, like in Corvus corax Linnaeus,

1758, the common raven, who received its

scientic name from Carl Linnaeus in 1758.

ARK doesn’t pay homage to former scien-

tists and omits the name of the person who

described Achatina limusegnis.

Helena Walker, a character in ARK who’s

supposedly an Australian biologist, left

some notes on Ark’s various creatures. Hel-

ena’s dossier about Achatina can be seen in

Figure 2.

Figure 2. Dossier entry on Achatina. Source: ARK:

Survival Evolved Wiki.

Now let’s break that down. First: “very

slow, very non-threatening land mollusk”

sounds about right, although if Helena was

indeed Australian as suggested she would

have spelled it ‘mollusc’ (the ‘k’ is an Ameri-

can idiosyncrasy, but we prefer it that way).

If it is attacked, it retracts into its shell, an

obvious and typical behavior of snails.

Second: “meat and chitin”. Indeed, sev-

eral real-world cultures have land snails in

their cuisine. But chitin? Well, it’s possible,

but not easy. Snails do have some chitin in

their shell, but that’s quite a small amount,

especially when compared to arthropods,

whose exoskeleton is largely made of the

thing. The primary component of snail

shells is calcium carbonate (CaCO

). Even

so, chitin can be extracted from it with

some effort and the right equipment and

chemicals (Adeosun et al., 2017; Oyekunle

& Omoleye, 2019). Researchers have even

extracted chitin from real-world Achatina

(Gbenebor et al., 2017). Wait a second. Re-

al-world Achatina? Don’t worry, we’ll get to

that later on.

Next, there’s the whole “Achatina does

not defecate normally” thing. ARK has a

weird xation with who defecates what and

we’ll just skip this bit. Snails do poop nor-

mally, though. Anyway, Helena says that

Achatina “secretes a thick, sticky substance”

that dries quickly. That is, of course, slime

or mucus. All land snails and slugs produce

mucus for locomotion: they actually “glide”

on top of it (Fig. 3). The mucus is a mix of

chemical substances and can also serve as a

defense against predators, microorganisms,

and even as a shield against desiccation

when the snail is aestivating (Barker, 2001;

Cilia & Fratini, 2018).

Figure 3. Snails leave a silvery slime trail in their

wake. Source: Wikimedia Commons (snail ho, 2007).

Helena also informs the reader of the

in-game use of Achatina’s secretions as

crafting material (‘Organic Polymer’ and

‘Achatina Paste’, a substitute to ‘Cement-

ing Paste’).

Unfortunately, real-world

snail mucus cannot be used that way yet,

although researchers are trying to get there

(Cho et al., 2019).

In any event, snail mucus

also has other applications. Due to its an-

timicrobial components, it can be used for

cosmetics and skin-care, as well as to treat

skin lesions and burns, (Brieva et al., 2008;

Tsoutsos et al., 2008). It is even being con-

sidered a substitute for surgical glue (Li et

al., 2017).

Chitin (and its derivative chitosan) also

has several applications in the industry:

food, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, agricul-

ture, textiles, and paper (Hamed et al., 2016).

Researchers are also looking at the possibil-

ity of using it as a biodegradable substitute

for plastic (Fernandez & Ingber, 2014) and

also as building material for an eventual

colony on Mars (Shiwei et al., 2020).

In ARK, Achatina can be domesticated

so the players can “farm” the resources it

Salvador et al.

Journal of Geek Studies 8(1): 9-18 (2021).

produces. However, they are not breedable

in the game, which is weird given their re-

al-world counterpart (see below). ARK’s

Achatina can also be a pet and, more impor-

tantly, can wear hats!

THE REAL ACHATINA

As mentioned above, Ark’s giant snails

have the “scientic name” Achatina limuseg-

nis. As such, it is not a huge leap to conclude

that they were based in the real-world Ach-

atina.

Achatina is a genus of pulmonate snails.

This means that these snails breathe through

a lung, instead of the usual gills found in

most other molluscs. Lungs have evolved

more than once among gastropods, usually

in terrestrial taxa

, rendering the traditional

“pulmonate” classication obsolete (albe-

it sometimes useful) in current taxonomy.

However, most lung-bearing snails, includ-

ing Achatina and other iconic species such

as the garden snail, are indeed related and

gathered in a large group called Stylom-

matophora.

The Stylommatophora are the most di-

verse group of land snails, with a whopping

20,000 species total worldwide (Rosenberg,

2014). A distinguishing feature of stylom-

matophoran snails is having their eyes lo-

cated on the tip of stalks, in contrast to the

position near the base of the tentacles seen

on most other gastropods. The eyestalks are

also known as ommatophores and are re-

sponsible for giving the Stylommatophora

their name.

Achatina and its closest relatives are

grouped in the family Achatinidae (Fig.

4). This is a very diverse family, including

around 1,000 species of many shapes and

sizes (MolluscaBase, 2020). The Achatini-

dae range from the tiny awl snails, some

of which are just a few millimeters long, to

the gargantuan Achatina snails themselves,

which include the largest of all land snails

with shells growing over 20 cm in length.

Figure 4. Assorted representatives of Achatinidae. A. Limicolaria ammea (Müller, 1774). B. Thyrophorel-

la thomensis Greeff, 1882. C. Subulina octona (Bruguière, 1789). D. The decollate snail, Rumina decollata

(Linnaeus, 1758). E. The giant African land snail, Achatina fulica (Bodwich, 1822). Source: Wikimedia

Commons (A, Siong Kiat Tan, 2011; B, Trochoidea, 2014; C, Invertzoo, 2010; D, Mike, 2007; E, Alexander

R. Jenner, 2010).

Giant snails of ARK: Survival Evolved

There are approximately 40 species of

Achatina, all of which are native to sub-Sa-

haran Africa (Bequaert, 1950; MolluscaBase,

2020). However, some species, such as the

infamous Achatina fulica (Bodwich, 1822)

are highly invasive and are now found in

tropical and subtropical areas worldwide.

Achatina fulica (Figs. 4E, 5) is known by the

common name ‘giant African land snail’;

however, this species is so widespread and

well-known that most people are equally

comfortable with the scientic name.

Most of the diet of A. fulica is composed

of vegetable matter of all kinds, including

decaying vegetation, fruits, and leaves. In

urban areas, it has been observed to eat

even paper and cardboard! These snails can

also eat meat, often sourced from animal

carcasses (including other snails). In more

than one instance, A. fulica has been report-

ed to attack and consume living leatherleaf

slugs (family Veronicellidae), which means

they can hunt for meat as well (Meyer et al.,

2008).

The invasive nature of A. fulica (and, to a

lesser extent, other Achatina snails) is large-

ly a result of human introductions. This

species is native to East Africa and has been

introduced to all other continents (except

for Antarctica) both intentionally, as a food

item or a novelty pet, and accidentally, as

the snails can attach themselves to vehicles

and survive long travels (CABI, 2020). The

results are often disastrous to local ecosys-

tems and crops, as A. fulica is capable of

consuming hundreds of species of plants.

Curiously, grasses, such as sugarcane and

maize, suffer little damage from A. fulica

(Raut & Barker, 2002; CABI, 2020). In addi-

tion to this, A. fulica adapts quite well to new

environments and breeds intensely: a single

individual usually lays 100 to 200 eggs at a

time, but there are reports of a batch of circa

1,000 eggs (Mead, 1961; Pawson & Chase,

1984). The combination of these character-

istics and the ensuing environmental dam-

age led the IUCN

to classify Achatina fulica

as one of the world’s top 100 invasive alien

species (ISSG, 2003; CABI, 2020).

Beyond the environmental impacts, A.

fulica is known to carry several parasites.

One of them is the nematode Angiostrongy-

lus cantonensis (Chen, 1935), which can in-

fect humans and cause severe cases of men-

ingitis. The parasite is usually transmitted

by eating the snail, but simply touching it

can be enough. Since A. fulica is commonly

found in urban areas, its invasions prompt

a serious public health concern.

Figure 5. A shell of an individual of Achatina fulica

shown in several different views. The shell is about

7.8 cm in total length and was collected in East Africa.

Source: Wikimedia Commons (H. Zell, 2013).

Achatina fulica thus seems to be a poor

choice for a pet, but some people like to keep

them, arguing they can be quite expressive

and fun to interact with. They can live for

ve to seven years and can grow quite large

in captivity: their shells can reach around 20

cm. Given the damage, they can cause to the

environment, in many countries it is illegal

to keep them as pets. Usual pets (cats and

dogs), however, are extremely bad for the

environment and are directly responsible

for the extinction of dozens of species and

still threaten hundreds of others (Medina et

al., 2011; Gomper, 2013; Doherty et al., 2016,

2017).

COMPARING THE SNAILS

Clearly, ARK’s Achatina was based on

Achatina fulica. Besides its name, the Wiki-

pedia page of A. fulica is the very rst result

when you google “giant snail”. ARK’s Ach-

atina is large for a snail, though, about the

Salvador et al.

Journal of Geek Studies 8(1): 9-18 (2021).

size of a reasonable dog, which is most un-

fortunately not feasible for real land snails.

But other than that, how well does the vir-

tual Achatina compare to its real-world

counterpart?

Let’s start by taking a look at its external

morphology. The shell of A. fulica is coni-

cal and rather elongated (Fig. 5). While the

shell of ARK’s snail might look supercially

similar, it is not so. It shows a aw that is

a typical mistake of artists when drawing

snails: the shell is not spiral (see also Salva-

dor & Cavallari, 2019). Snail shells grow in

a spiral manner, with each successive new

whorl growing on top of the previous one.

While it might be difcult to visualize this

just by looking at the photograph of a shell,

you can easily see it if you have a shell on

hand or by looking at an X-ray image (Fig.

6). ARK’s shell (Fig. 2) is like a hollow hood

that just sits atop the snail’s soft parts like

a hat.

Figure 6. X-ray of the shell, showing its internal struc-

tures. Source: Adobe Stock (#376762797).

Figure 7. Comparison between the anatomy of ARK’s Achatina (above) and a real garden snail, Cornu aspersum

(O.F. Müller, 1774) (below). ARK’s Achatina follows the basic internal anatomy of a snail very closely, but then

again, the bottom image was probably the one used to draw ARK’s snail. Source: ARK: Survival Evolved Wiki

(excerpt from Fig. 2 above); Wikimedia Commons (AI2 & Jeff Dahl, 2007).

Giant snails of ARK: Survival Evolved

The soft parts of ARK’s snail (except the

colors, see below) are spot on (Fig. 2) and

were likely drawn based on an actual pho-

tograph of Achatina (Fig. 4E). It has a pair

of eye-bearing stalks (the ommatophores)

and a pair of tactile and chemically sensi-

tive tentacles. The skin on the dorsal surface

of the snail (on its back, so to speak) is very

rugose. But the sole of the snail’s foot also

seems to be rugose (Fig. 2), which is mis-

taken. The “sole” of a snail’s foot is smooth,

which is necessary for adhesion while

crawling, especially on vertical surfaces or

while hanging upside down.

The internal anatomy of ARK’s Achatina

(Fig. 7) is also spot on, showing all the or-

gans in the right places. But that is expect-

ed, given it was copied from schematics

available on Wikimedia Commons (Fig. 7).

BIODIVERSITY ON THE ARK

One interesting aspect of ARK’s Achati-

na is that it has ve different colors depend-

ing on the region of the game (Fig. 8).

shall call these ‘color morphs’, to use a more

biological term.

Typically, when we see two similar

snails with different colors they belong to

two different species (Fig. 9). However, in

ARK, all the different color morphs belong

to a single species, Achatina limusegnis. But

is it possible for a single species to have in-

dividuals with such varying colors? It turns

out it is.

Figure 9. These shells differ in color, size and also a bit

in shape. They represent two different species in the

same genus. The one on the left belongs to the species

Kora corallina Simone, 2012 and is about 2 cm tall; the

one on the right is Kora nigra Simone, 2015, about 3 cm

tall. They both live in the savanna-like environments

of eastern Brazil. Source: Birckolz et al. (2016).

Take the grove snail Cepaea nemoralis

(Linnaeus, 1758) from western and central

Europe, for instance. It has a wide variety

of color morphs: from whitish to yellow,

orange, red, and brown, being either of

a single color or presenting one or more

Figure 8. The several colors of Achatina in ARK. A. Snail from Region 0: red body with a white dorsal stripe and

white tips of the ommatophores. B. Region 1: red shell. C. Region 3: red highlights on shell sculpture. D. Region 4:

red dorsal stripe. E. Region 5: red ventral region. Source: ARK: Survival Evolved Wiki.

Salvador et al.

Journal of Geek Studies 8(1): 9-18 (2021).

dark stripes on the shell (Fig. 10). All these

morphs belong to a single, though highly

variable, species. Why there are so many

different morphs has been hotly debated by

scientists since at least the 1950s. Present hy-

potheses include (1) lighter colors being re-

lated to environments with higher tempera-

tures, and (2) the presence of stripes being

related to visual protection against preda-

tory birds (Silvertown et al., 2011; Surmacki

et al., 2013). Other famous examples of col-

or morphs in land snails include the Cuban

painted snail Polymita picta (Born, 1778) and

the living jewel snail Liguus fasciatus (O.F.

Müller, 1774) from Florida and Cuba.

Figure 10. Color variation in the grove snail. Source:

Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research, UFZ

(A. Künzelmann, 2011).

The soft parts of the snails can also vary

a bit in coloration, which is due to different

amounts of pigments on the skin, just like

in our species. There are even completely

white snails like the ones in ARK (Fig. 8),

which can be a natural coloration for some

species or be “albino” individuals in some

cases, like in A. fulica.

Now the red color seen in one variety of

Achatina in ARK (Fig. 8A) is very unusu-

al among land snails. The most famous ex-

ample is the Malaysian re snail Platymma

tweediei Tomlin, 1938 (Fig. 11), which is a

species with very restricted geographic dis-

tribution and highly endangered due to de-

forestation and other human activities. Its

heavy metal looks in particular have made

it a target for the pet trade, putting the spe-

cies in even more danger (Foon, 2014).

Figure 11. The Malaysian re snail has a black and

red body pigmentation that seems straight outta the

Nine Hells. These photos are courtesy of Azrie Allia-

mat, Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation,

Universiti Malaysia Sabah.

FINAL THOUGHTS

ARK’s giant snail has a good bit of reality

and a healthy dose of ction. That is ne,

as video games need to have some artistic

liberties and not be too strongly anchored in

reality. We cannot forgive the wrongly-de-

signed shell, though, because that would be

a simple matter to solve and would great-

ly improve verisimilitude. In any event,

it is always good to see underrepresented

animal groups in games, as they can help

to raise awareness about their real coun-

terparts among players and maybe – just

maybe – help create a more environmental-

ly-friendly mindset (Salvador, 2017).

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Junn Kitt Foon for procuring

the photos of Platymma tweediei for us.

ImAge usAge

The images used herein to illustrate the

game and its contents comes from ARK: Sur-

vival Evolved or from websites about it. Studio

Wildcard holds the copyright to ARK: Survival

Evolved.

About the Authors

Dr. Rodrigo B. Salvador is a biologist spe-

cializing in the study of land snails, who – as

some would argue – spends way too much time

playing video games. He hates survival games

but somehow always ends up playing them for

a bit. Would that just be an exercise to conrm

the hypothesis that he hates the genre?

Rafael M. Rosa is a biology undergraduate

student interested in zoology, with a particular

emphasis on animal evolution and systematics.

He also likes video games and has been playing

them for many years now, although most of his

time is spent on grand strategy games nowa-

days.

Fernanda S. Silva, MSc., is a biologist spe-

cializing in land and freshwater snails, interest-

ed in scientic dissemination, and an admirer of

games but unfortunately without much practice

in them.

Daniel C. Cavallari, MSc., is a biologist and

taxonomist specializing in land and marine

snails. He is also a passionate shell collector and

gamer who loves survival games (especially

horror). ARK isn’t really a horror game, but he

wonders if watching everyone defecate every-

where could be classied as horror.

notes

The game’s name is actually stylized as ΛRK.

That’s a formatting nightmare, though, so we’ll

stick to regular letters here.

The Nintendo Switch version has a dismal

metascore of 29.

All the in-game information presented here

was gathered from the Ofcial ARK: Survival

Giant snails of ARK: Survival Evolved

Evolved Wiki.

In Latin, the word ‘limus’ means ‘slime’ and

‘segnis’ means ‘slow’.

Another “famous” snail in ction whose mu-

cus is valuable is the ail snail, from the tabletop

RPG Dungeons & Dragons. According to Volo’s

Guide to Monsters (Wizards of the Coast, 2016:

p. 144), a ail snails “leaves behind a shimmer-

ing trail that quickly solidies into a thin lay-

er of a nearly transparent substance [that] can

be harvested and cut to form window panes

of varying clearness. It can also be heated and

spun into glass objects of other sorts. Some hu-

manoids make a living from trailing ail snails

to collect this glass.”

The authors of that study also have some vid-

eos testing how their slimy adhesive can hold

heavy loads: https://www.pnas.org/con-

tent/116/28/13774

There is a genus closely related to Achatina

that’s called Archachatina. That would be a 20%

cooler name for a species from ARK. If only the

game designers had delved a bit more in Wiki-

pedia… Anyway, the prex ‘arch-’ means ‘chief’

or ‘principal’, like in the words archbishop,

archangel, archend, etc.

Despite that, some freshwater snails have also

evolved lungs, providing a way to obtain oxy-

gen even when they live in low-oxygen waters.

An example of this are the apple snails (family

Ampullariidae), which are popular aquarium

pets.

Sometimes classied as Lissachatina fulica, de-

pending on whether Lissachatina is considered a

subgenus of Achatina or a full-blown genus in

itself.

International Union for Conservation of Na-

ture.

Excluding the Aberrant and Eerie variants.

Salvador et al.

Journal of Geek Studies 8(1): 9-18 (2021).