Brown Garden Snail Helix aspersa Silver City New Mexico United States 28 July Adults mating Helicidae
Four snails mating at once. Native to the Mediterranean and western Europe, from Africa east to Asia Minor, and north to the British Isles. Introduced and naturalised many other places in the world. This species of snail uses love to copulation, each of the two snails "shoot" one or more darts into the other snail before copulation. Mucus on the dart introduces a hormone into the mate that allows more of its sperm to survive. Brown Garden Snail is a hermaphrodite, being both male and female. During a mating session of several hours, two snails exchange sperm and after about two weeks approximately 80 spherical pearly-white eggs are laid by both snails. The young snails take one to two years to reach adulthood.
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Photo credit: © Rick & Nora Bowers / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: animal, aspersum, aspersus, cantareus, cornu, crop, eater, escargot, gastropod, herbivore, introduced, mate, native, pattern, pest, plant, shell, snail, snails
