Amazin

g Facts
About
Snails
Generally, snails
are looked at
with disgust.

Too few people

take into
account that the
world of snails
has many
interesting
secrets to
reveal:

So for example,
a snail can crawl
over a knife's
edge without
hurting itself.
Snails can go Of all terrestrial snails, amber snails (Succinea) live nearest to water. Picture: [RN]
over water

There are snails, which kill their prey using a harpoon tooth, Predator snails hunt their prey following
its scent, through rivers and up trees, until the prey has fallen. Sea-living slugs eat jellyfish, only to
collect their nettle cells and to use them for their own defence.

Angel-like translucent snails swim through the sea and eat other snails.. There is a marine predator
slug which eats other snails without a tooth in its mouth.

There are 43,000 gastropod species on our earth today Snails not only live on land, but also in
freshwater and in the sea.

The neurobiology of learning was researched using snails.

Much more there are numerous snail species in our gardens, which not only are not pests but even
are quite useful, in that they eat other snails or their eggs, they return wilted plant parts to the
circulation of nature or they help in the manufacture of compost.
General information .
The Roman Snail (Helix pomatia) is a snail well known in the Europa. It is quite large and so it is easily
seen with the bare eye. Roman snails can often be found crawling near bushes in the early morning
or in the evening in damp air.

Many are considered to be garden pests and are poisoned where they are met. there actually are
snails that neither are garden pests, nor do they even eat plants. They might, however be
encountered in gardens!

Reproduction also has many interesting secrets to reveal: After all, Roman snails are not either male
or female, but both, and at the same time. Unique in all of the animal kingdom: Roman snails and
their relatives during mating use a love dart that is stung into the mate's body!

Roman snails they are called, because those snails have been picked for millennia to serve as human
food. So today the Roman snail is a very well known species. But we should not be misled to assume
we knew everything about this fascinating creature. Even today, new scientific discoveries are made
on the field of Roman snail biology.

Hibernation:

Roman snails can become very old for a snail. To be able to survive that long, they have to hibernate,
which they do by closing their shell mouth with a calcareous lid and by hiding in an earth hole they
have dug themselves before. During hibernation most body functions are largely reduced and after
waking up the snail is severely dehydrated and famished.

Reproduction:

Roman snails. Mating among Roman snails is introduced by an extensive courtship, during which the
mates may sting each other with a so-called love dart. A Roman snail's eggs are about 2 mm in
diameter and are laid in an earth hole dug by the snail in early summer.

Economy:

The tasty Roman snails, called "Escargots de Bourgogne" in French, probably have been picked to be
eaten since prehistoric times. Only picking them more than for personal needs but for sale, has taken
the Roman snail just short of extinction. In most countries it was once abundant, the snails today are
very rare.

Roman snails mostly are protected today and picking them from nature is forbidden by law. But
both Helix pomatia and its relative, the brown garden snail (Cornu aspersum), are cultivated on snail
farms (Hélicicultures). Next to France, also Germany and Switzerland have become a new centre for
the ecological, as well as the economical, cultivation of snails.
 Relatives of the Roman Snail
The brown garden snail (Cornu aspersum) is one of the most widely spread land snail species in the
world. Originated from the Mediterranean it is today found is as far away areas like Northern America
(South Carolina, Louisiana and California), Southern America (south of Brazil), Australia and New
Zealand, as well as in South Africa.

Description

Compared to the Roman Snail (Helix pomatia) the shell of Cornu aspersum is usually a bit smaller. It
is between 25 and 40 millimetres wide and between 25 and 35 millimetres high. Usually the shell
of Cornu aspersum, compared to Helix pomatia, is a bit more spherical, the last of the 4 ½ to 5 shell
whorls is clearly wider than the others.

The scientific species name of the brown garden

snail, aspersum, means "spotted", referring to the
shell's colour pattern. On a light yellowish to
brownish base colour there are several darker
longitudinal bands, that may be spotted in a
lighter colour. Laterally there are yellow zig-
zagging stripes. The shell surface is
characteristically wrinkled.

Besides this dark type of the brown garden snail,

especially in heliciculture farms there are less
colourful types, that may even be of one only
colour. Common to all is the wrinkled shell
surface and the conspicuous folded apertural lip.
Close up picture of a Cornu aspersum shell pattern. [RN]
Habitat

The brown garden snail lives in various habitats. Besides synanthropic habitats in gardens and parks
made by man, it also lives in coastal dunes, grove and bush land, between rocks. In contrary to Helix
pomatia, Cornu aspersum is not that dependant on a limestone underground. But it neither often
appears in the fens or in deep forest, nor on open meadows, where there is little visual shelter against
predators. Instead, it prefers habitats with hiding places in rock and wall crevices or below thick
vegetation cover.

Specialities
Being an inhabitant of areas with oceanic
temperate climate, the brown garden snail is not
able to to endure the severe Central European
winters as efficiently as Helix pomatia does. In
contrary, Cornu aspersum does not produce a
hibernation lid, but instead closes the aperture
with a mucus membrane and hides in a sheltered
place

Systematics

Though Cornu aspersum is a relative of Helix

pomatia, it does not belong to the genus Helix.
However though, it is often misleadingly
Mating in Cornu aspersum takes place differently to Helix po-
called Helix aspersa.
matia, as the photographer Hans Josef Köhler has observed.

Use by Man

Today the brown garden snail makes the largest part of French snails raised under the name
"Escargot petit gris" (little grey snail)