♥ Rosy Wolf snail, Euglandina rosea, Clip # 168

Photos/Video for non-commercial, educational use:
http://www.zoology-quest.net/wiki/images/animalia/mollusca/gastropoda/stylomm...
or,
http://www.zoology-quest.net/wiki/index.php/Euglandina%20rosea

Kingdom Animalia -- Animal, animals, animaux
Phylum Mollusca -- molluscs, mollusks, mollusques, molusco
Class Gastropoda Cuvier, 1797, slugs, snails
Order Stylommatophora
Family Spiraxidae
Genus Euglandina P. Fischer and Crosse, 1870
Species Euglandina rosea (Ferussac, 1818) -- rosey wolfsnail, rosy wolfsnail
http://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_v...

Order Stylommatophora
(terrestrial snails and slugs)
http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/specimens/Stylommatophora...

Excerpts from "The Rosy Wolf Snail" (Euglandina rosea)
http://www.weichtiere.at/Mollusks/Schnecken/land/euglandina.html
Wolf snails are are part of the mainly neotropic land snail family of Oleacinidae, whose area of distribution spread from Southern and Central America up into the South Eastern United States. Some species, though, also settled in the area of the Mediterranean.
Looking closely at a wolf snail's head, it appears to have three pairs of tentacles. The longer eye stalks can easily be seen, as well as the shorter tentacle pair below. Below these there appears to be a third pair of tentacles. Only, this is actually not a pair of tentacles, but the wolf snail's greatly elongated lips.
A terrestrial snail's lips are full of chemical sense cells, by the help of which the snail can search the ground for food. In the case of the wolf snail, the lips are used to follow the prey's scent along it's slime trace. Which a wolf snail does, like a wolf follows the scent of it's prey, hence the snail's name. Only in the case of the wolf snail, it is more precisely the taste, not the scent, it follows.
From another snail's slime trace the wolf snail also gains information on whether the snail is a potential meal rather than a fellow wolf snail. Which basically makes not much of a difference, as wolf snails also are cannibals. On pursuit of it's prey the wolf snail does not move at a proverbial snail's pace, but at double or triple that speed. It follows it's prey up trees and even for certain distances under water.
As wolf snails are not only snail-eaters, but also cannibals, even the young snails already feed on eggs and their siblings.
While it eats smaller snails whole, larger prey is eaten piecemeal. Man has introduced wolf snails as a biological weapon against the giant African land snails (Achatina fulica) that had previously been introduced to several Pacific islands (Hawaii, Mariana islands, Polynesia) for economical reasons. Instead to eat the giant African snails, that had become a large pest problem for local agricultural areas, the wolf snails preferred to hunt the smaller endemic tree snails (Partula, Achatinella, among others). Those had no endemic predator enemies and therefore were not accustomed to evading predator snails. Today many of those tree snail species are estimated to be extinct and must be though to be invariably lost. As wolf snails' feeding behaviour was already well known and documented, the consequences of such an intrusion into an endemic ecological system should have been predictable. Alas, the local authorities disregarded the warnings of worried malacologists and ecologists.
http://www.weichtiere.at/Mollusks/Schnecken/land/euglandina.html

Category:

Pets & Animals

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• snail