The common garden snail, named Jeremy, may appear like others to the naked eye, but he was dubbed a "one-in-a-million find" as he is the mirror image of how other snails appear.

Jeremy's shell spirals in an anti-clockwise direction which means he is unable to mate with snails whose shells spiral the opposite way.

An appeal was launched by Angus Davison, from the University of Nottingham, to find fellow gastropods for Jeremy to mate with in a bid to discover more about the creature's genetic.

Lefty, from Suffolk, and Tomeu, from Spain, came forward as potential mates following the #snaillove campaign on Twitter.

But Dr Davison told Radio 4's Today programme: "We turned up not one but two very rare snails, one from Ipswich and one from Majorca.

"The irony is, it's like that thing where maybe you introduce your best friends to a girl you're interested in.

"The two snails we found as a result of the programme got together."

The partnership between Lefty and Tomeu resulted in 170 babies - all of which coil to the right - while Jeremy remains in the lab in Nottingham.