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They heaved over a second log. Alison found a harvestman. “This is an arachnid, but it's different from a spider in that it doesn't have a waist.” It was a little beige daddy longlegs.

“Harvestmen don't dissolve their prey like spiders,” Jim added. “They have to rip it apart.” (Spiders inject their prey with venom, wait for its insides to liquefy, and then suck the insides out like a vanilla milkshake.)

Each of these small creatures had its own story—a fact not often appreciated by laypeople. One thing invertebrate lovers have in common is their dismay that so much attention is given to animals with spines. Vertebrates are wonderful, they would tell you, but limited. For example, how many kinds of humans are there? Just one. Homo sapiens. That makes human beings very special, but not at all diverse. If you want to see a different type of human, good luck. But take leeches. There are five hundred different kinds around the world. Or take harvestmen—there are five thousand different kinds and probably many more waiting to be discovered. Ninety-nine percent of all animals are invertebrates.

The reason the spineless get such scant attention is that they're so little. It's size that put the giant squid—the world's largest invertebrate— on the map and at the top of everyone's research agenda. And that's why Tasmania's own giant freshwater lobster is slowly gaining notoriety. If each of the creatures under the log were the size of an echidna or a pademelon or a person, then we might all show a bit more respect. In fact, we'd all be running screaming out of the woods, shit-scared for our lives.

John produced a snail from under the log and held it in the flat of his palm. Everyone gathered around. “We haven't seen one of these for years,” he said excitedly. It was a Northeast forest snail (Anoglypta launcestonensis), one of Tasmania's 116 species of land snails. Like so many Tasmanian animals, this slow-moving creature lived nowhere else in the world—and it occupied its own island within an island, a forty-two-mile by thirty-mile area surrounding the Field Naturalists clubhouse. Its habitat is the underside of rotting logs where it is believed to eat detritus and fungi.

Although the snail was keeping its body hidden, we got a good look at its curious shell, which had a sideways look to it as if the snail was wearing a beret. The shell's outer side was brown, rough, and grainy. John turned it over, exposing a smooth, swirling black underside with a bright lime-colored stripe following the contour of the spiral.

Like the thylacine, this little animal had once been a missing species. In 1970, “they sent parties up into the Northeast to find one, because it hadn't been seen for eighty years,” John said. The snail was located, oozing about its old haunts, but this rediscovery eventually launched a controversy.

In an issue of the Tentacle, the newsletter of the mollusk division of the IUCN—The World Conservation Union, Tasmanian zoologist and snail expert Kevin Bonham wrote that the Northeast forest snail “arouses strong emotions even among scientists because of its beauty and taxonomic distinctiveness.”

In 1995, the snail was listed as a vulnerable species under the Threatened Species Protection Act. Tasmanian conservationists began using the snail's protected status as a shield against the clear-cutting of old-growth forests in the Northeast and held numerous “Save the Snail” rallies. However, in 1996, Bonham determined that the snail's population was secure (much larger than previously thought) and two years later advocated that it be delisted. Conservationists were livid, and an ugly battle, with namecalling, ensued. As the delisting seemed to coincide with new logging proposals, Bonham was accused of being a collaborator with the forestry department—this despite the fact that he was simultaneously advocating that three other snail species be added to the threatened species list.

Alexis snapped a photo of A. launcestonensis. “It's an