snail
Sign in to savethumb|Helix pomatia sealed in its shell with a [[calcareous epiphragm]]
AI overview
A snail is a slow-moving mollusk that lives in a hard, spiral shell it carries on its back for protection. Snails are found in diverse environments around the world and play important roles in their ecosystems as both herbivores and prey for other animals.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Article
17 sectionsContents
- Overview
- Anatomy
- Diet
- Types of snails by habitat
- Slugs
- Snail speed
- Parasitic diseases
- Human relevance
- In agriculture
- Textiles
- As pets
- Culinary use
- Cultural depictions
- See also
- References
- Gallery
- External links
thumb|Helix pomatia sealed in its shell with a [[calcareous epiphragm]]
A snail is a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name snail is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have a coiled shell that is large enough for the animal to retract completely into. When the word "snail" is used in this most general sense, it includes not just land snails but also numerous species of sea snails and freshwater snails. Gastropods that naturally lack a shell, or have only an internal shell, are mostly called slugs, and land snails that have only a very small shell (that they cannot retract into) are sometimes called semi-slugs.