Wet spell bring out giant land snails

A visitor from our Wildlife Network Zimbabwe group entertained a visitor today in their garden in Douglasdale, Bulawayo, this morning. We identified the snail as a Giant land snail. Lissachatina fulica seems to currently be the new name. They feed on other smaller snails, basically they are cannibalistic. 

So, where do giant snails go during the dry and winter season? Do they hibernate underground like some frogs? Doesn't the heat affect them?

Answer: Snails are vulnerable to dehydration and require refuges to survive hot and dry summer conditions and high soil surface temperatures. They over-summer above or below the soil surface on stubble, weeds, fence posts, rocks or other objects that provide cool, moist refuges.Snails slime is imperative to its life, providing it with a natural defence mechanism against predators and also to regenerate body parts when they’re lost and attacked. Snail slime is now used in some moisturising skin products and in cancer retardant creams due to its regenerative properties.For snails to get dehydrated will prevent them from living, will dry out their slime and will cause blindness from not being able to retract their eye stems.There is also a hormone within snails slime that they secret allowing males to find females by scent. Similar to tortoises…. Making a tortoise urinate by picking it up is detrimental to its winter hibernation, they need  to retain all possible water for their hibernation. Making them urinate dehydrates them and deprives them of vital liquids.

Giant land snail.