Mr. Snail wishes me happy birthday!
- Pranita Rao
- Dec 21, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: Jan 5
In an hour, I am going to turn 31, and my first birthday wish has come from a snail!
Each snail teaches me something, and I try to learn something new every day from them and about the science surrounding snails.
Today, Mr. Snail taught me two things:
As I was feeding it on my hand, suddenly, it toppled from my hand and fell to the ground. The distance from my hand to the ground must have been about 1 foot. Still, I was scared that I had hurt Mr. Snail. However, to my surprise, when I picked it up and re-fed it a flower, it behaved as if nothing had happened. It became busy eating the flower rather than going back into its shell.
Upon further studying Mr. Snail's morphology, I found a study surrounding gastropods like Mr. Snail.
Mr. Snail's shell should have had a thin outer organic layer or a thick crystalline layer of calcium carbonate. These layers determine Mr. Snail's shell strength, hence, determining the damage of a fall.
Since I spend almost an hour daily with snails, I have developed a habit of blabbering about my day to them. Today, I asked Mr. Snail if it could wish me happy birthday in some way. To my surprise, it moved its body slowly and wrapped itself all over my fingers making it very difficult to take it off my hand. It took me ten minutes to gently put it back into a pot. To me, that was Mr. Snail going, 'Happy birthday, I'm not leaving, human!'
In summary, dear friends, snails have shells that are fascinating and they respond to human behavior.
Ta-ra!
-Don't be a stranger,
Pranita
Reference:
Jordaens K, De Wolf H, Vandecasteele B, Blust R, Backeljau T. Associations between shell strength, shell morphology and heavy metals in the land snail Cepaea nemoralis (Gastropoda, Helicidae). Science of The Total Environment. 2006;363(1-3):285-293. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2005.12.002
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