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  Profile

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  In flight

Slow & Steady

Garden Snail

Cornu aspersum

• common
• 2 km/h
• Starter
• Not Evaluated

Slow and steady wins the... actually, it just arrives really, really late. But it arrives!

Population

Abundant and globally widespread; no formal population estimate exists (extremely common, often treated as an agricultural/horticultural pest rather than a conservation concern)

Habitat

Gardens, hedgerows, cultivated fields, woodland edges, coastal dunes, and other disturbed or vegetated habitats with damp shelter and calcium-rich soil for shell-building

Fun fact

During mating, garden snails are reciprocal hermaphrodites that each fire a hardened, calcite "love dart" into their partner's body before exchanging sperm — a courtship behavior unique to this snail family.

Range

Native to the Mediterranean Basin (northwest Africa, Iberia, eastwards to Asia Minor and Egypt, north to Britain); widely introduced and naturalized on most continents including North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and parts of Asia

Diet

Herbivorous/detritivorous: leaves, stems, flowers, fruit trees, vegetable crops, and decaying plant matter; also grazes algae and fungi, and consumes soil, bark, or eggshells as calcium sources for shell growth

Size

0.04 m

Lifespan

3 years