You might think a snail is just a snail and that they are all the same, but in fact there are more than 100 species of land snails just in the UK. Garden snails are one of the commonest and are probably the species you are most familiar with. They have round light brown shells with darker brown stripes and patches which measure up to 4cm across. The shells grow as the snails grow and they can even regrow if theyre damaged. Their bodies, are a light mottled grey and can extend to more than 10cm in length. On their heads garden snails have 4 tentacles, the top 2 are where the snails simple eyes are located whilst the bottom two are used for smelling their environment. Garden snails have very poor eyesight, they cannot see in colour and its thought their eyes are only really useful for noticing the difference between night and day. At the part where the snails body meets its shell, they have a breathing hole which they can open and close. Snails move using a muscle underneath their bodies which is known as a foot, this contracts in waves propelling the snail forwards and leaving a trail of slime behind. They are notoriously slow with an average speed of somewhere around 0.03miles per hour, although in a snail race in 1995 a snail did manage nearly double that speed!
Garden snails are mainly active at night or after it has rained. They feed on leaves, shoots and fruits and other organic matter. They will also eat dead animals if they come across them, including other snails. In their mouths they have around 14000 teeth that are arranged in rows along their tongues. These are used for rasping away at whatever they are trying to consume. They don’t have to eat every day and in fact they can go many weeks, sometimes months without feeding if there is no food available or if it too cold for them to be active.
Garden snails are hermaphrodites, in that they have both male and female reproductive organs. They become sexually mature at around 2 years of age and will try to mate with other snails if they come across them. Here you can just see the snail on the lefts white reproductive organ retracting and after mating both snails will be fertilised. However they don’t always need to mate to produce eggs, they can fertilise themselves. Each snail will lay upto 80 white eggs, usually buried in soil or in a damp place. The eggs take 2 weeks to hatch after which the young snails emerge as miniatures of their parents. Each snail can reproduce up to 6 times in a single year.
Their native range covers the UK, western and central Europe but they have also been introduced to over countries, including the united states. They are mostly active during the spring summer and autumn, when during the colder months they retract into their shells and then seal themselves in with a hard layer of dried up mucus which is known as an epiphragm. There is no data on how many garden snails are in the world, or whether their numbers are increasing, decreasing or stable. In the wild they live on average for 2 to 3 years but there are report of them living for much longer in captivity, from 5 to 15 years of age.
#wildlife #nature #gardenwildlife
Some of the footage used in this video was obtained using creative commons licencing. The originals and their licence details can be found at:
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24 июл 2024
