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Friday, March 14, 2008

GARDEN SNAIL


GARDEN SNAIL, originally uploaded by THE BLACK RABBIT.

Well. At least the snails have come out tonight to play - they've liked this wet weather, clearly.
The garden was crawling with these tiny snails this evening.
I don't know much about Gastropods or indeed Molluscs in general, but I'd hazard a guess that this is one of the tiny round garden snails from the Zonitidae family, and very possiblly Oxychilus cellarius, which as the name suggests, is very common in gardens, parks and cellars.

These snails tonight in the garden all had (calcium carbonate) shells of about 8 or 9mm across (no more, for sure).
Just in case you weren't aware, there are about NINETY species of terrestrial snails in the UK.
Most snails exhibit 4 retractable "tentacles" at the front of their head. The bottom two are "olfactory" organs (smell), whilst the top (upper) two are the "eye stalks" or, if you want a posh word to impress people with at dull dinner parties (or more likely, bore them to tears), you can call them by their proper name..... ommatophores

3 comments:

Jane Adams said...

Smell stalks and eye stalks eh! You learn something new every day... Don't think it's going to impress people when I can't even say it, come to think of it I don't get invited to dinner parties anyway!

Come to darkest Dorset any time... (hey, we don't all have silly accent you know).

I be se-in yer!

Jane Adams said...

Googling away tonight and found this link... had to share it with you:

http://www.theblackrabbit.co.uk/index.htm

You haven't secretly been knitting soft toys have you?? are you sure???

The Black Rabbit said...

Heh heh!
Nope!

But I LIKE that black rabbit mug...

Hmmm.
My birthday is not that far away.
I'll speak to my other half!

Cheers!