| South African Pale Landsnail |
| Along with my Achatina immaculata snail I also got a new Pale snail to replace the two babies that I killed (sob!). It's distinctive features have to be it's pale, almost transparent shell, and it's translucent, yellowey body. It's a very bold snail too. It never hides away and is not shy of interacting with me. However it always, without fail, buries itself into the substrate to sleep. I sometimes can't find it as it is buried so deep! It seems to grow very slowly indeed, and I wonder if it perhaps prefers a slightly warmer climate to the fulicia. However I am assured it will grow to be very big indeed, in fact nearly as big as the giant Tiger snails, which can grow to 30cm long! As for what species it is, we have not had much success in identifying it. Someone did suggest that it was Metachina kraussi, but I am not convinced as the body is the wrong colour and it hasn't got a dark stripe around the rim of the shell either. I have had the snail since August 2001 (and am writing this in January 2002). The snail has only grown a few milimetres since I got it. I am assured by the friend who sent it to me that they do grow that slowly. It is amazing as all other species that I know of tend to grow fairly fast. I will keep a record of it's growth at intervals at the bottom of this page (but I cannot guarantee that I will record it at sensible intervals, or even regular intervals as I have too much else to do.) It will be interesting to see how much it grows in a year. |
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| In the pictures (to the right) you can clearly see the very pale shell with hints of an orangey yellow, and the almost translucent quality to the body, despite the snail's keen attempts to get out of the scanner as quickly as he can! And in the second picture the water on his shell has reflected nicely in the scanner light making him look very pretty indeed...though it was meant to be an entire body shot, - but he went walkies while the scanner was still scanning so I made the best of a bad job by clipping just the shell for the picture. Again his colour is shown nicely. |
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| MY RECORD OF THE GROWTH OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN PALE LANDSNAIL: 1st April 2002. Shell Length: 3.5cm |
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