Mary Allen
Because it is quite large, it can hardly be overlooked: the Roman snail is one of the best-known snails in our country and is unmistakable due to its typical appearance.
Characteristics
What does the Roman snail look like?
The Roman snail belongs to the animal phylum of the mollusks and there to the suborder of the terrestrial pulmonary snails and to the family of the snails.
It is a typical shell snail: its light gray body consists of the so-called creeper, which merges into the head, and the visceral sac, which is surrounded by a protective layer of tissue. The entire surface of the body is covered by a protective layer of mucus.
Why do snails have a house?
The snail shell is formed by cells in the mantle. It consists of limestone, is banded yellowish-brown to dark brown, and is three to five centimeters in diameter. In contrast to e.g. mussel shells, the shell of the Roman snail, like that of many other shell snails, is wound asymmetrically and spirally, almost always to the right. Only in very rare cases, in about one in ten thousand snails, is a Roman snail found with a shell wound to the left. Such animals are called snail kings.
The Roman snail’s body can be up to ten centimeters long and weigh up to 30 grams. This makes it the largest land snail in Central Europe. On the back, you can see the breathing hole on the edge of the shell through which the snail takes in air. Four antennae stand out on the head, at the end of the two upper antennae you can see the eyes as dark spots.
Where does the Roman snail live?
The Roman snail is distributed throughout Germany and from central France to southern England, southern Scandinavia to the Ukraine, and south to northern Italy, the Balkans, and Macedonia.
Roman snails live primarily in damp, shady habitats. They can be found on meadows, in bushes, and in sparse forests, but also in parks, gardens, and vineyards. It loves warmth and likes soil that is rich in lime and not too dry. Roman snails prefer calcareous soil because they can absorb lime from it to form their shell. If they lack lime, their shell becomes thin and brittle.
What types of Roman snails are there?
A closely related species is the spotted Roman snail. It occurs in Western Europe and the Mediterranean region and is slightly smaller than our Roman snail.
How old does the Roman snail get?
Roman snails living in the wild can live up to eight years. In the terrarium, they can even reach an age of 20 years, in rare cases probably even up to 30 years.
Behavior
How does the Roman snail live?
The Roman snail is a loner and mainly searches for food in the evening. In contrast to many other snails, however, it is also active during the day, especially when the weather is humid and the sky is overcast. She moves by crawling on the sole of her foot, leaving behind a typical trail of slime. It can cover up to seven centimeters per minute, which corresponds to a speed of around 4.2 meters per hour. She is also a good climber, which means she crawls up plants or walls without any effort. In case of danger, she withdraws completely into her snail shell.
The slime that the Roman snail gives off serves a number of purposes: First, it prevents the snail from injuring itself when it crawls over sharp stones or the like. Second, the mucus keeps your skin from drying out. This is essential for the animal to survive. And thirdly, it protects the snail when it is attacked by small insects: it then produces large amounts of mucus at lightning speed, which it blows up into a foam with the help of breathing air, thus keeping the attackers at a distance. She even makes hissing noises that scare off the enemies.
Roman snails use their various senses to orient themselves. Not only do the eyes sit on the two upper feelers, but the snail can also smell with these feelers. She touches and tastes with the two lower feelers. However, the Roman snail cannot hear.
In winter, Roman snails fall into a cold torpor. Before that, they eat a lot, then they dig themselves into the ground, withdraw into their housing and close it with a lime cap, the so-called epiphragm. During the cold rigidity, the animals’ hearts beat very slowly and they can withstand temperatures of down to -40 degrees Celsius. When it gets warmer again in spring, they shed the lime cover and crawl back up to the surface. When it is very dry and hot, the snail closes its shell with a thick layer of mucus to protect it from drying out. Sometimes it also forms a lime cover.
Friends and foes of the Roman snail
Garden snails have many enemies, especially the young ones. In addition to small mammals such as hedgehogs and moles as well as birds of prey, insects such as ants, mites, and spiders also attack the animals.
Roman snails are eaten by humans in some countries. In France, for example, they are considered a delicacy. Snails that are served in restaurants or bought in supermarkets today mostly come from Eastern Europe or from so-called snail farms.
How do Roman snails reproduce?
Roman snails are hermaphrodites. That is, each snail is both male and female and has male and female organs. However, every Roman snail has to mate with another Roman snail, the animals cannot fertilize themselves. The mating season is from March to June. During mating, which can last up to 20 hours, two snails stand up foot to foot, feel each other with their feelers, slowly rock back and forth and push so-called love darts into each other’s feet. These are lime arrows about 11 millimeters long.
About four to six weeks after mating, the snail digs a pit in which it lays 40 to 60 white eggs. Then she closes the pit with earth and leaves the clutch to itself. The young snails hatch about two weeks later. They weigh just 0.1 grams and already have a tiny, glass-like housing. After hatching, they eat their eggshell to absorb the calcium needed to form the shell. The shell grows with the body of the snail until the age of about three years. The housing is not only getting bigger, but the housing wall is also getting thicker.
Because their snail shell is still very soft, many young snails fall victim to predators. Only about five out of 100 young snails reach the age of two to three years when they become sexually mature and reproduce.