The Cupid Connection
Some writers have commented on the parallel between the love darts of snails and the love darts fired by the mythological being Cupid, known as Eros in Greek mythology. It is even possible that there is a connection between the behavior of the snails and the myth. Malacologist (mollusk expert) Ronald Chase of McGill University said about the garden snail Helix aspersa, "I believe the myth of Cupid and his arrows has its basis in this snail species, which is native to Greece". He added, "The Greeks probably knew about this behavior because they were pretty good naturalists and observers."
In some languages, the dart that these snails use before mating is known as an "arrow". For example, in the German language it is called a Liebespfeil or "love arrow", and in the Czech language it is šíp lásky (which means "arrow of love").
Read more about this topic: Love Dart
Famous quotes containing the words cupid and/or connection:
“I bow’d not to thy image for succession,
Nor bound thy bow to shoot reformed kindness,
Thy plays of hope and fear were my confession,
The spectacles to my life was thy blindness;
But Cupid now farewell, I will go play me,
With thoughts that please me less and less betray me.”
—Fulke Greville (1554–1628)
“Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply; and it must be by a long and unnatural estrangement, by a divorce which no subsequent connection can justify, if such precious remains of the earliest attachments are ever entirely outlived.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)