The following video shows a snail pooping, and how the poop comes out of the snail’s breathing hole to the side of its body.
Snail poop full#
If a snail eats watermelon its poop often turns red, carrots make snail poop orange, and cuttlebone or calcium from the soil make snail poop white, black, or gray.Ĭlick here for the full list of foods that snails like to eat. Most garden snails’ poop is brown because they have brown shells or green from the plants they like to eat. The color of snail poop depends on the color of the snail’s shell and the food it eats. But the poop soon dries out to become smaller, paler, thinner and string-like, often with the two ends curling in to make a “C” shape. Snail poop usually looks like a rope or tube of sticky poo as the snail releases it. Source: Image adapted, with thanks, to SeanMack The label shows where the snail’s breathing hole sits under the shell, which lets air in and out of the shell and is where snail poop comes out. This photo shows a snail lying upside down holding onto a blade of grass. The poop then slips through the breathing hole and out the side of the shell, dropping to the ground or whatever the snail is crawling on. This means that a snail poops into its shell. Snail poop is released from the anus, which is close to the lung and breathing hole. The gap is called a breathing hole.Ī breathing hole is important for snail poop… This opening lets air into the shell so the snail can breathe with the lung inside its shell. On one side of the bottom of the shell, towards the front of the snail, there is a small hole. This is risky.Īfter torsion, when the anus is in the front of the shell, the snail can pull itself into its shell head first, giving it the quickest protection from danger and a higher chance of survival by keeping its head. This leaves the head exposed for longer and puts the snail at risk of losing its head and its ability to eat, which will ultimately kill it. The original shell direction, with the anus at the back, means a snail must first pull its body into the shell and its head last. When a snail is threatened by a predator or scared of something, it pulls itself into its shell as a way to protect itself from harm.
After torsion, the lung and anus end up at the front of the shell, closest to the snail’s head.Įxperts think that torsion happens for protection. For example, the snail starts life with its lung and anus at the back of its shell. When torsion happens, the snail’s organs flip from front to back with the shell. When a snail is very young, its shell turns or rotates 180° to face the opposite direction. This is one of the main differences between snails and slugs, which keep their organs inside their body. Undigested food and foods that snails can’t digest, like mature grass, continue moving through the intestine towards the anus.Ī snail’s internal organs, such as its liver, lung, heart, and stomach are all kept inside the snail’s shell. Waste moves into the intestine where nutrients are absorbed. Now the food is wet enough to be pushed down the snail’s esophagus using muscle contractions, and the pulp ends up in the snail’s stomach.ĭigestive juices break down the food in the stomach, including fats, proteins, carbohydrates, and cellulose (the tree fiber that paper is made of, which is why snails love to eat paper!) Small food chunks are mixed with saliva to make a pulp or paste. They chop food in their mouth or scrape it off a surface using a tongue-like ribbon made of thousands of tiny teeth.Ĭlick here for the full explanation on how snails eat food with their mouths and teet h. Snails tear and hold food with a cartilage jaw.
The story of snail poop has to begin with snail eating.
See the long green string of poop it left behind?