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Sticker of Garden snail
Bug card No. 0555 of 1,500

Garden snail

Cornu aspersum
Name means: “the speckled horn”
Eats: PlantsSnails, slugs and wormsGardens and meadowsNo legsNot an insect, but a bug cousin

The garden snail carries its house on its back. When it is too dry or something scares it, it pulls its whole soft body inside. It glides along on one big foot, on a shiny trail of slime that it makes itself.

Fun fact: this one is not an insect at all, it has no legs! But kids find it on every bug hunt, so it lives in Bug Wiki too.
Lives in
First from around the Mediterranean Sea, now in gardens almost all over the world
Length
2.5 to 4 cm (0.98 to 1.6 in)
the width of the shell
Top speed
about 0.05 km/h (0.03 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. Wash your hands after holding one, like after touching any wild animal.
What does it eat?
It eats leaves, flowers, fruit and vegetables, and scrapes its food with a tongue covered in thousands of tiny teeth.
For real!Photo of Garden snail
Picture by unknown author. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Garden snail about 4 cm long (1.6 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)A banana about 18 cm (7.1 in)
as long as 7 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 72 seconds

How big is Garden snail compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Its eyes sit on the tips of the two long feelers on its head. The two short feelers are for smelling and feeling.

2

A garden snail moves at about 1 centimetre a second. That is roughly 50 metres in an hour.

3

Its tongue, called a radula, has thousands of tiny teeth and works like a nail file.

4

In dry weather it seals the door of its shell with dried slime and sleeps until the rain comes.

5

The shell grows together with the snail. A snail never leaves its shell and never swaps it.

you asked

Most asked questions about Garden snail

?How fast is a garden snail?

About 0.05 km/h. It needs more than a minute to cross a dinner table.

?What do garden snails eat?

Leaves, flowers, fruit and vegetables. That is why gardeners are not always happy to see them.

?Can a snail leave its shell?

No. The shell is part of its body and grows with it.

Myth buster

Myth: A slug is a snail that lost its shell.

Truth: No. Slugs are different animals that never had a big shell. A snail cannot live without its shell.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Cornu aspersum
Named by
O. F. Müller, 1774
Group
Snails, slugs and worms
Family
Helicidae
Classification
Gastropoda > Stylommatophora > Helicidae
Lives on
Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, South America, Australia and Oceania
Also known as
Brown garden snail

Where the facts come from

  1. Cornu aspersum (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by unknown author. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.

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