Milk snail
The milk snail is a big land snail with a round shell. It comes from warm, sunny lands around the western Mediterranean Sea. When the weather gets too hot and dry, it shuts itself in its shell and waits.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
People have eaten this snail for a very long time. Shells were found at an old Roman town in Morocco.
If its shell breaks, it can repair it using calcium.
In drought it goes into a deep summer sleep and slows its body right down to save energy.
People carried it to places far away, like the USA, Bermuda and southeastern Australia.
Most asked questions about Milk snail
?Can you eat milk snails?
Yes. It is an edible snail, and people have eaten it since Roman times.
?Where does the milk snail live?
Around the western Mediterranean Sea, and it was brought to the USA, Cuba and Australia.
?What does a snail do when it is too dry?
It hides in its shell and goes into a long sleep until better weather comes.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Otala lactea
- Named by
- O. F. Müller, 1774
- Group
- Snails, slugs and worms
- Family
- Helicidae
- Classification
- Gastropoda > Stylommatophora > Helicidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, North America, Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Spanish snail
Where the facts come from
- Otala lactea (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Sam Fraser-Smith. CC BY 2.0, 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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