STORIES WITH SNAILS
Garden snail (Cornu aspersum)
Ashley Hall, Marketing Coordinator
March 20, 2020
Today on our Facebook LIVE, we learned all about the common Garden snail (Cornu aspersum) from our FABULOUS Environmental Educator Lisa Golba, and we wanted to share some snail facts and resources with you! NOTE: This livestream will be available on our Facebook feed for a while, so feel free to share with others!
The adorable book that Lisa read is called Escargot by Dashka Slater, illustrated by Sydney Hanson.
Link to purchase: https://amzn.to/3990Fqz
Make your own ESCARGOT salad craft with the kiddos at home!
http://www.raisingkinley.com/2017/04/a-book-craft-escargot.html
Our favorite snail fact?
Snails have tens of THOUSANDS of tiny teeth on a tongue-like apparatus called a radula (RAD-you-luh). Snail teeth are made of a protein called chitin instead of enamel and dentine like ours. Can snails bite? Nope! A radula is more like a cheese grater and it works by scraping food into their mouths like a conveyor belt instead of chewing it.
Aquatic snail radula (AquariumCareBasics.com)
Snail radula magnified with a scanning electron microscope (Source: sciencephoto.com)
Illustration of a snail mouth. Source: Debivort on Wikipedia.com
Tracks made on an algae covered surface in a greenhouse by a gastropod’s radula. (Source: Wikipedia.com)
Finally, watch this charming time-lapse video of snails in an English garden from the BBC:
For EVEN more printable nature activities for kids, visit www.shakerlakes.org/jrnat
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