science

walking up the back stairs this morning to campus, i noticed that the smushed snail population appears to have quadrupled. also now there are many, many more baby snails (still alive) wandering around the steps. i contemplated several times moving some of the baby snails off the steps so they didn’t get squash-crunched as their older relatives have. pity for snails.

then i started wondering, honestly, where do baby snails come from? so i checked. it’s disgusting. i no longer feel the need to save them from other people’s feet. i’m still going to be careful not to step on them, but that’s mostly a gross factor of wearing thin flip flops and not wanting snail guts on my bare feet. not that i know if they have guts in the sense of which i am thinking. but certainly…they eat plants…so they must have a gastric system.

plus though anyway there’s that noise they make when you do step on them from the shell cracking, you know? that’s a terrible noise. it always makes me flinch. all right, now i feel bad for them again. no one deserves to be stepped on. but wait, let’s read the procreation process again together.

Snails spend many hours courting before they mate. They twist themselves around each other and cover themselves in frothy slime. After mating, each snail will go search for a soft ground to dig and lay its eggs. The snail lay its eggs in a nest, 2.5 to 4 cm deep in the soil. Each snail can lay an average of 85 eggs and they hatch in 2 to 4 weeks, depending on the temperature and moisture of the soil. The eggs are concealed with a mixture of soil and mucus. They are then covered with excrement.

The first thing that a newly hatched snail does is to find food. It will eat whatever that is left of its eggshell too. It will also eat any eggs that have not hatched yet.

frothy slime, poo, and cannibalism. delightful.