The Chairman of the Yorkshire Conchological Society paid our school a visit at the end of last week along with some of his colleagues, in order to meet some very unusual slugs that have been discovered on our site.
Dr Terry Crawford, from the University of York, is an expert in the area of zoology that studies slugs and snails and he was extremely interested to come and look at our slug and to talk to our Year 6 children about the possibility that a new species may have been found!
Although still under investigation, Dr Crawford believes that our Fyling Hall slug originated from Italy and could have been introduced to the area as small eggs some time ago. Interestingly, when the current owner of Fyling Hall, Mrs White, was asked about how slug eggs could ever have come to Fyling Hall from Italy, it emerged that the original owners of our Georgian building did indeed import Italian marble from Europe some time ago. Not only this, but the owner took a tour of Europe, spending some time in Italy, before settling here in Robin Hood’s Bay.
At this stage, the slug has been named the “Fylingthorpe slug” but further research needs to be performed before it is indeed confirmed as a new species. If this were to be the case, our school and grounds would become famous in the scientific world of Conchology.
