Serena via Compfight

Hi everyone!

Before I begin to write this post I need to make something entirely clear: I am a little obsessed with snails, and I think they are one of the most awesome animals ever! Ok, so it all started when I was about nine years old. I wanted a pet snail, but I didn’t know why… I just really wanted one. I asked my parents for a snail and they didn’t want to just go to the pet store and buy me a one immediately because I had never wanted one before. Another problem was that we couldn’t find a snail at any of the pet stores we did go to. Time passed and I still didn’t have a pet snail, but that summer something wonderful happened.  One day I was hanging out at my beach house on Fire Island, NY and my mom walked up to me with two little, adorable snails she had found just chilling out on the boardwalk. I couldn’t believe it! I was so happy! That is the story of how I started loving snails and how I got my first pet snails.

 

That was just a bit of an intro, now the real post begins. There are thousands of different types of snails. Some snails live on land and some live in the water. I am going to write about land snails mostly. There are countless species of land snails but they all have a shell and a slimy body. Here are some interesting facts about snails:

1. In the winter some snails hibernate by sealing up their shell with a mucus skim (see personal narrative for more information).
2. Some snails eat limestone for the calcium to keep their calcium carbonate shell strong.
3. Snails can have up to a few thousand teeth!
4. Some scientist theorized that snails have magnetic teeth, which they use as compasses.
5. If a snail was to slide across a razor blade it would not get cut because snails float on slime.
6. Some people including me, think snails have associative thinking abilities.
7. The largest snails in the world can weigh up to 39 pounds!
8. Snails can live any where from five to twenty-five years.

 

Now I’ll tell you about snail biology. All snails have a shell although they come in many shapes, colors, and sizes. If you pulled a snail’s shell off its body it would not be a slug because there is no skin under the shell. Snails have a lot of organs like us, including a liver, heart, lungs, and a stomach. They also have some organs that we don’t have like a mucus gland, which they make slime with. Snails also have four tentacles on their head, two for seeing and two for smelling. If a snail’s eye hits a hard object it contracts it through a tube in its top tentacle and into its head really fast. Under the smelling tentacles there is the snail’s mouth which is so small it’s hard to see. Well that’s just a little bit about snail biology.

 Now it’s time for the fun part, snail habitats and species! Snails can live just about anywhere ranging from a rain-forest, where no one has been, to my very own house. The Australian Trumpet Snail is the largest snail in the world. The largest land snail in the world is the Giant African Snail. Some snails live in the rain-forest, climbing up tall trees, and others live in the high grass near my beach house. Most snails like wet places so they don’t get too dry. If the weather gets too dry then they curl up inside their shell and seal the opening with a mucus skim like they do when they are hibernating. Those are just a few cool things about snail species and their habitats!