Like most children, Otto and Bruce Bell love being in nature when they were little, collecting pockets full of rocks, sticks and shells to bring home and examine. But when their peers switched their attention to sports and screens, the twins’ interest in the natural world kept growing. Now, they’re on a mission to find and record some of the country’s tiniest species.
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00:00I helped rediscover a species which was thought to be going extinct.
00:07Bruno Bell knows a lot about snails.
00:10There are 11 families of land snail in Tasmania.
00:14So I can give you an example, they're called dot snails.
00:18So there are two there?
00:19Two there, yeah, they're adults.
00:21For twin brother Otto, it's weevils.
00:24They were almost like transformers, their legs tucked in and their snout tucked in.
00:29These are all collected on the south coast track.
00:31I'm having two species named after me, of this tiny little leaf litter inhabiting weevil.
00:42The 21-year-old Tasmanians have turned a childhood passion for nature into what could become a promising career.
00:49Oh, is that a weevil?
00:51No.
00:53Oh, it is!
00:54What is it?
00:55Oh, it's actually a really interesting one.
00:58What is it?
00:59It looks like tiger ears.
01:00Oh, damn!
01:02Two of Tasmania's only experts on their preferred invertebrates,
01:06Otto and Bruno frequently take field trips together.
01:10I do a lot of photography and I generally do the collecting.
01:14Collections that end up in the mini-museums that are their bedrooms.
01:19This one was found in Marawa.
01:22It's a new species for today.
01:24Marawa?
01:25Marawa.
01:26Oh, so you really travel?
01:27Yeah, we go all over.
01:28He's not kidding.
01:30From the bush and beaches of Tasmania to the natural history museums of mainland Australia and even Europe,
01:37Otto and Bruno are well-versed in species of the world.
01:44Simon Grove met the twins as teenagers,
01:47when their mum asked if they could volunteer at the Tasmanian Museum's invertebrates collection.
01:53They can spot the tiniest weevil or a snail the size of a pinhead.
01:57Not only spot it, but then look at it without even so much as a hand lens
02:01and be able to say, oh, look at the micro-sculpture on the protoconch of that snail.
02:08He says it's not just their skills that have impacted him.
02:11They teach me all sorts of things, both about the zoological subjects and about human nature.
02:18And they're not only recognised by local experts.
02:21This is one of four letters Bruno's received from David Attenborough.
02:26I helped rediscover a species which was thought to be going extinct,
02:30and to me it was very significant, and so I sent photos and he responded.
02:36Weevil species are set to be named after the young researchers,
02:40Bruno Bellii and Otto Bellii, the tipped titles.
02:45I would have thought early after about 10 years or something I'd get something like that,
02:49but yeah, it's an honour really.
02:55The pair hope to identify the hundreds of weevil and snail species that remain undescribed in Tasmania,
03:02which could have impacts in Australian agriculture.
03:05Some of them are major pests, so if we learn more about them we can protect crops.
03:11And conservation.
03:12We have some really unique species here in Tasmania, which if they're gone, they're gone.
03:19Acorn is more a source of comfort than curiosity for the twins.
03:24The fox terrier is named after one of their first ever collections.
03:28But it's creatures far, far smaller that will always bond the Bells.
03:34We'll always have that shared interest and we'll help each other with research,
03:40but I think we'll go on separate paths.
03:42One day, perhaps a long way down the track.