Fun Facts
- Phylum Mollusca is one of the most diverse groups in the Kingdom Animalia, there are nearly 100,000 described species (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2012).
- Class Gastropoda:
- Used in fine cuisine like in France (French Food and Cook, 2008)
- These little guys are the intermediate host for some common diseases.
- Schistosomiasis (Gillis, 2012)
- Subclass Pulmonata:
- Most snails in this subclass have the trait of a spiraled shell
- All snails are hermaphroditic
- Family Polygyridae:
- These snails have a “reflected lip” (Binney, 1837), this means that the lip of the shell is turned upwards exposing a little bit of the inside of the shell.
- The lip is located around the opening where the head sticks out of the shell.
- The “Atrium” is the genital pore where both penis and vagina are located. So essentially the male and female reproduction parts are accessible through the same whole (Pearce and Hotopp, 2012).
- Terrestrial snails can lay one egg or dozens of eggs, when they lay multiple eggs they are laid in cluster. (Pearce and Hotopp, 2012).
- Snails use their very sensitive touch receptors in their feet to traverse their environment, they are so elegant when they move they can walk over a knife's edge without cutting themselves (Nordsieck, 2012).
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