Like most children, Otto and Bruno Bell loved being in nature when they were little, collecting pockets full o 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.
00:10So I can give you an example, they're called dot snails.
00:14So there are two there?
00:15Two there, yeah, they're adults.
00:17For twin brother Otto, it's weevils.
00:20They were almost like transformers, their legs tucked in and their snout tucked in.
00:25These are all collected on the south coast route.
00:27I'm having two species named after me, of this tiny little leaf litter inhabiting weevil.
00:38The 21-year-old Tasmanians have turned a childhood passion for nature into what could become a promising career.
00:45Oh, is that a weevil?
00:47Oh, it is!
00:48What is it?
00:49No, it looks like topias.
00:50Oh, damn!
00:52Two of Tasmania's only experts on their preferred invertebrates, Otto and Bruno frequently take field trips together.
01:00I do a lot of photography and I generally do the collecting.
01:05Collections that end up in the mini-museums that are their bedrooms.
01:09This one was found in Marawa.
01:13It's a new species.
01:14Marawa?
01:15Marawa.
01:16Oh, so you really travel?
01:17Yeah, yeah, we go all over.
01:18He's not kidding.
01:20From the bush and beaches of Tasmania to the natural history museums of mainland Australia and even Europe,
01:27Otto and Bruno are well-versed in species of the world.
01:35Simon Grove met the twins as teenagers when their mum asked if they could volunteer at the Tasmanian Museum's invertebrates collection.
01:43They can spot the tiniest weevil or a snail the size of a pinhead.
01:47Not only spot it, but then look at it without even so much as a hand lens and be able to say,
01:52oh, look at the micro-sculpture on the protoconch of that snail.
01:57And they're not only recognised by local experts.
02:00This is one of four letters Bruno's received from David Attenborough.
02:06Weevil species are set to be named after the young researchers.
02:10Bruno Beliai and Otto Beliai, the tipped titles.
02:14I would have thought early after about 10 years or something I'd get something like that, but yeah, it's an honour really.
02:23The pair hope to identify the hundreds of weevil and snail species that remain undescribed in Tasmania.
02:30We have some really unique species here in Tasmania, which if they're gone, they're gone.
02:36These young men taking big steps to help some of our smallest species.