Today its sails
`– Snails are gastropod mollusks; members of the phylum Mollusca and the class Gastropoda.
– When they feel threatened, they usually retreat into their shell to protect themselves.
– The largest land snail is the Achatina achatina, the Giant African Snail.
– Snails have no backbone.
– Some land snails feed on other terrestrial snails.”
– North America has about 500 native species of land snails.
– The snails that just hatch the egg can eat their shells and even other eggs of their brothers.
– Most snails live from 2 to 5 years, but in captivity, some have exceeded 10 or 15 years of age.
– In France, edible snails are “escargot,” a word that also applies to a dish made with them, which is an appetizer.
– The courtship, process by which they attract each other before mating, lasts between 2 and 12 hours.
– In some places, people eat snail eggs, and call them “white caviar.”
– Usually, land snails hatch from eggs.
– The mucus of the garden snail is used to treat wrinkles, spots, and scars on the skin.
– Most snail species are hermaphrodites, so they have both male and female reproductive organs.
– The speed of snails is around 0.5-0.8 inches per second. If they moved without stopping, it would take more than a week to complete 1 kilometer.
– Land snails cover the entrance of their shell with a dry mucus secretion called epiphragm, but a few do it with a structure, that in the aquatic snails, has the name of the operculum.
– Snails do not change shells when they grow up.” Instead, the shell grows along with them.
– Some predators of terrestrial snails are beetles, rats, mice, turtles, salamanders and some birds.
– Calcium carbonate is the main component of the snail shells.
– Snails host several types of parasites that, while may not kill them, they are capable of affecting or killing their predators or animals that eat the snails. Even humans who eat poorly cooked snails can become seriously ill.
– The food of land snails goes through a mouth structure called the radula, which has several rows of tiny teeth inside.
– Land snails do not chew their food. They scrap it.
– Land snails breathe thanks to a lung.
– A single garden snail (Helix aspersa) can have up to 430 hatchlings after a year. Just a single snail.
– The size of the shell of a snail reflects its age.
– Many snails are in danger of extinction. Among these are the species Aaadonta constricta and Aaadonta fuscozonata, and others of the genus Aaadonta and Achatinella are in critical danger of extinction.
