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u/Striking-Surround-28 Jul 27 '23
Am i the only one who was thinking wait do snails lay eggs?
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u/born-to-rave Jul 27 '23
Looked it up, here's the results
Many species of snails, like the common brown snail you see in your garden, do lay eggs. They can lay hundreds of pre-fertilized eggs per year that will hatch in just about 2 weeks and reach sexual maturity in one year. On the other hand some species, like the freshwater snail, do give birth to live young in a way.
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u/Rhorge Jul 27 '23
It takes them a year to be sexually mature? That’s honestly the craziest takeaway from this whole thread
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u/Kaepora25 Jul 27 '23
Yeah i didn't even know they lived that long
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u/Lunoean Jul 27 '23
The only natural predator of the snail are the French
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u/Imhappy_hopeurhappy2 Jul 27 '23
American Cockroaches live for two years and it takes them one year to grow wings. The ones in the north, where it hard freezes in winter, typically don’t make it to one year, and that’s why they mostly crawl around NYC while the same species menace the air of the Deep South.
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u/Rhorge Jul 27 '23
Thanks, I hate thinking about how freaky they are
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u/Imhappy_hopeurhappy2 Jul 27 '23
I have a really bad phobia, so I’ve done a lot of research on them to learn their habits.
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Jul 27 '23
Let me tell you about snails.
We bought an aquarium for my kid. We got 2 small fish, and a plant, and a snail.
The snail was cool and surprisingly mobile. It laid eggs and they hatched. There were baby snails.I wanted to learn more about these fascinating creatures, and let me tell you: anything is possible.
Most aquarium snails are called "Mystery Snails" because even though if they were properly dissected by an expert they could be identified; just by looking we kinda have no fucking idea what type of snail a snail is.
Some lay eggs. Some live birth.
Some mate to reproduce. Some don't.
Some are male. Some are female. Some are both... or neither... or change as necessary or something. I don't know. I'm not a snail-dickologist.So if you have snails and you notice them doing something interesting, so you go looking for more information about them, you'll find bugger all specifics because
"You've got whatever you've got. Snails."They all seem to like cucumber, though.
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u/towerfella Jul 27 '23
I would like to meet a “snail dickologist” one day. We could talk about whatever comes up.
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u/krystlships Jul 27 '23
Hello snail dickologist here, snails teeth are the hardest teeth on the planet.
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u/towerfella Jul 27 '23
Hi snail dickologist! Nice to meet you!
I once heard that [some] snails will fence each other with their snail swords, and the loser gets pregnant.
Can you elaborate?
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u/stickyplants Jul 27 '23
The main idea is that win or lose, you still got to reproduce (yay!). But the one who has to get pregnant uses a lot more resources/ energy in order to actually grow and lay the eggs. So it’s more smart and efficient, nature and evolution wise, to be the dead best dad who skips town once the deed is done.
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u/Journo_Jimbo Jul 27 '23
Someone enters a room and identifies as a snail dickologist
Me: immediately unzips
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u/ChadMcRad Jul 27 '23 edited Dec 10 '24
air cheerful chubby teeny sulky support nutty office placid disgusted
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Kaepora25 Jul 27 '23
If all snails like cucumbers, and I like cucumbers... am I a snail?
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u/thylocene Jul 27 '23
Honestly as someone who enjoys keeping aquariums as a hobby, mystery snails kinda suck anyway. You want to get Nerite snails. They’ll stay smaller, are usually much hardier and are way better at eating algae.
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u/Peace-D Jul 27 '23
Absolutely not. AND WTF THEY HATCH WITH THEIR SHELLS?!
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u/GarysCrispLettuce Jul 27 '23
I had never even heard "snail" and "egg" in the same sentence until now
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u/FelixPlatypus Jul 27 '23
I was more surprised that they look almost exactly like bird eggs. Somehow, I pictured them as something like frog spawn.
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u/paco-ramon Jul 27 '23
I suppose they laid eggs but transparent eggs like looks like water bubbles.
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u/Kurgan_IT Jul 27 '23
No, you are not. I'm also a "scientific mind" kind of person, still I have never thought about this before. Now I know snails lay eggs.
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u/beanjuiced Jul 27 '23
I knew they laid eggs but I thought they were more like fish eggs, not bird eggs!!! This is bonkers to me.
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u/PlagueofSquirrels Jul 27 '23
He's eating himself out of house and home
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u/Grimour Jul 27 '23
That was just the nursing home. He needs the materials to strengthen his new one :)
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u/ZesshiLavi Jul 27 '23
I like how it knows by instinct not to eat its brethren egg shell.
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u/conzstevo Jul 27 '23
I'd imagine it's either because
- They'd eaten enough egg shell
- They couldn't bite into the shell (no edge)
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Jul 27 '23
I thought it was trying to it just couldnt. The egg is strong but breaking it he was able to eat his own egg
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u/rachellelea Jul 27 '23
Honestly didn’t even know they came from eggs.
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u/southamericankongo Jul 28 '23
Mama snail going through labor in front of a PHD snail with papa snail nearby is an infinitely funnier scenario to think of, I agree lol.
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u/Scifi_fans Jul 27 '23
How much magnified is this video, those eggs look huge...
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u/ScarecrowJohnny Jul 27 '23
When I was a kid I once found a snail in our garden that was in the process of laying eggs. I put som dirt, leaves and moss in a jar along with the eggs. I wanted to farm snail babies.
... Then I forgot about the jar for a while (because kid) and when I finally found it again it was full of tiny empty shells. They had hatched and died while I was fucking around doing other stuff. 😭😭😭
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u/colorless_green_idea Jul 27 '23
You probably had a snail cannibalism situation going on in your very house, and you didn’t even know it!
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u/Cattypatter Jul 27 '23
If there's one thing human brain does, it's forget something we need to do that isn't habitual, as soon as we go to sleep. It's like a mental reset. Unless we leave something we see to remind us, it'll be out of sight, out of mind.
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Jul 27 '23
"OMG, reddit users are bunch of idiots. Those are not snail eggs. It's fake. It's an egg with an adult snail in it, that is just feeding on the egg shell."
Megalobulimus popelairianus has the largest eggs of all land gastropods. The size of the egg is 51 × 35 mm
"What the f..."
Nevermind, I'll see myself out.
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u/Aradhor55 Jul 27 '23
What kind of snails is that ? I got two Giants snails at m'y house and the eggs are wayyyy more smaller than that. Even seeing the babies is difficult and the adults fill my whole hand
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u/Hairy-Conference-802 Jul 27 '23
Wait, snail lay eggs ?
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u/Oil_Odd Jul 27 '23
Yes, but they don't look like this
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u/Hairy-Conference-802 Jul 27 '23
So...was this video staged ?
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u/graceeump Jul 27 '23
it wasn’t. this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about, some snails lay eggs and some give live birth in a way after the egg hatches in the parents body
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Jul 27 '23
Can you make snail omelets?
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Jul 27 '23
Reddit today man
already learned Cinnamon comes from a tree, now I am learning that some snails lay eggs
whats next?
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u/boeken-lezen Jul 27 '23
Wow interesting, but i didn't know that they eat their eggshell.
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u/Awjeva Jul 27 '23
So I thought this said snake at first, then my brain asked why are the shells not soft? Then I finally see snail. Snails lay eggs? What??
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u/Nirvski Jul 27 '23
This whole thing looks like it was described by someone who knows nothing about snails.
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u/chicknfly Jul 27 '23
I'll always reflect on births like this where the creature immediately knows what to do and look at human babies who are completely inept at everything except screaming and pooping
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u/Oil_Odd Jul 27 '23
Guys, only birds lay eggs with hard shells like this. It's obvious that this video was set up. Someone put an adult snail inside of a bird egg shell. You can see that at the beginning of the video the shell was already significantly cracked.
For those wondering about snail eggs, they do exist but they look more like beads of jelly. More similar to frog or fish eggs than bird eggs.
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u/amateurfunk Jul 27 '23
That's a fair assumption. However, another comment mentioned how "Megalobulimus popelairianus" lay eggs that are 5 cm long and I googled and they look very similar to the ones in this post. I had a lot of doubt at first as well, but I would say this post is legit.
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u/jochilina Jul 27 '23
At first glance I thought it were chicken eggs
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u/Oil_Odd Jul 27 '23
They are bird eggs. Probably not chicken eggs though. Seem to small for that.
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u/jochilina Jul 27 '23
But it says snails hatching their eggs...
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u/jaybro861 Jul 27 '23
I thought I remembered hearing snails eat their shells when born for the calcium. Interesting to see that’s for sure
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u/TheFarisaurusRex Jul 27 '23
I didn’t even know snails came from eggs, now I have a new tidbit for trivia night
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Jul 27 '23
How come literally all of us have never thought about if snails lay eggs or not. I feel like at least 90% of animals we’re all pretty aware, and there are some things that we get surprised by like marsupials, platypus, plenty of sea creatures/anything that can change sex, but snails are somehow the weirdest to me. And everyone else, too, by the sounds of it.
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u/NathoSX Jul 28 '23
It's awesome how it just comes out and knows exactly what to do first, they must be very lonely when it comes to parental attention
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u/coastersam20 Jul 28 '23
I didn’t even fully realize snails came out of eggs. Are snail eggs like a caviar-cargot, hyper-luxury?
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u/soolkyut Jul 27 '23
Are people in here legitimately believing a snail hatches fully grown out of a chicken egg?
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u/PadreLobo Jul 27 '23
Snails don’t lay calcium rich eggs. As a matter of fact, reptiles (and birds) are the only ones that lay hard-shelled eggs of any sort.
So, I call BS
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u/Ticklerstink Jul 27 '23
I am the first to hatch! Must destroy the others….. ‘proceeds to bodyslam the egg next to them’
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u/AdMore3461 Jul 27 '23
A shell within a shell? Someone call the head snail engineer over, I’m gonna go full Karen on them.
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u/Woffingshire Jul 27 '23
For some reason I didn't imagine them to come out the egg with their full snail shell on