When certain hermaphrodite snails — that is they are male and female at the same time — mate, they stab each other with so-called love darts. Now, for the first time, scientists have discovered a snail species with a love dart that works like an injection needle.

The syringe-like dart delivers a “gland product” to the partner snail “via channels within the dart and comes out through the holes that are present on the side of the dart,” Joris Koene, an ecologist at Vrije University in Amsterdam, explained to NBC News in an email.