Snails Making a Living

and flowers galore...

Snails love this mushroom. Every day, there are snails on it, always eating. There are more than 125 species of snails in the state. They are Gastropods.

The class Gastropoda is a diverse and highly successful class of mollusks within the phylum Mollusca. It contains a vast total of named species, second only to the insects in overall number. The fossil history of this class goes back to the Late Cambrian. As of 2017, 721 families of gastropods are known, of which 245 are extinct and appear only in the fossil record, while 476 are currently extant with or without a fossil record.

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Notice the trail of snail slime above, right. The slime is mucus.

Chemically, the mucus produced by land-living gastropodes belongs to the class of glycosaminoglycans (previously called mucopolysaccharides). Externally, one kind of mucus is produced by the foot of the gastropod and is usually used for crawling. The other kind of external mucus has evolved to coat the external parts of the gastropod's body; in land species, this coating helps prevent desiccation of the exposed soft tissues. The foot mucus of a gastropod has some of the qualities of glue and some of the qualities of a lubricant, allowing land snails to crawl up vertical surfaces without falling off.

The slime trail that a land gastropod leaves behind is often visible as a silvery track on surfaces such as stone or concrete.

Fascinating!

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Check out the video of a snail and a giant millipede above.

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And look at this amazing creature! Who are you?

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This anthill is about ten feet long by the trail. It was at or near this same spot last year.

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This looks like a Wild Rose to me, but the state flower of Iowa isn’t supposed to bloom until June, so it is very early. Perhaps one of the biologists who subscribe to Cedar Creek Nature Notes can help us out. The Wild Rose is the state flower of Iowa.

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Sometimes, if Violet and I are quiet as we walk up to the pond, we spook some ducks. These look like Blue-Winged Teal to me, but what do I know?

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“You lookin’ at me?

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And for the fun of it, here is our resident bunny Fred in our front yard (note: we call every rabbit in our yard Fred...)

Thanks for reading! Here are four of my favorite nature Substacks: Larry Stone’s “Listening to the Land,” Diane Porter’s My Gaia, Al Batt’s Al’s Substack, and Jaron Sedlock’s Jaron’s Curious Adventures. Please consider subscribing. All will entertain, educate, and soothe your soul.

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