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Snails are eaten by humans in many areas such as Africa, Southeast Asia and Mediterranean Europe, while in other cultures, snails are seen as a taboo food. In English, edible land snails are commonly called escargot, from the French word for 'snail'. [1] Snails as a food date back to ancient times, with numerous cultures worldwide having ...
The practice of rearing snails for food is known as heliciculture. For purposes of cultivation, the snails are kept in a dark place in a wired cage with dry straw or dry wood. Coppiced wine-grape vines are often used for this purpose. During the rainy period the snails come out of hibernation and release most of their mucus onto the dry wood/straw.
The first snails to hatch eat the shells of their eggs. This gives them calcium needed for their shells. They may then begin eating unhatched eggs. If the snail eggs are kept at the optimum temperature, 68 °F (20 °C) (for some varieties), and if none of the eggs lose moisture, most eggs will hatch within three days of each other.
Edible molluscs are harvested from saltwater, freshwater, and the land, and include numerous members of the classes Gastropoda (snails), Bivalvia (clams, scallops, oysters etc.), Cephalopoda (octopus and squid), and Polyplacophora (chitons). Many species of molluscs are eaten worldwide, either cooked or raw.
Helix pomatia, known as the Roman snail, Burgundy snail, or escargot, is a species of large, air-breathing stylommatophoran land snail native to Europe. It is characterized by a globular brown shell. It is an edible species which commonly occurs synanthropically throughout its range.
The radula works like a file, ripping food into small pieces. Many snails are herbivorous, eating plants or rasping algae from surfaces with their radulae, though a few land species and many marine species are omnivores or predatory carnivores. Snails cannot absorb colored pigments when eating paper or cardboard so their feces are also colored. [3]
An apple snail, Pomacea maculata, floating and eating a piece of carrot The diet of gastropods differs according to the group considered. Marine gastropods include some that are herbivores , detritus feeders, predatory carnivores , scavengers , parasites , and also a few ciliary feeders, in which the radula is reduced or absent.
Otala lactea, known as the milk snail or Spanish snail, is a large, edible [3] species of air-breathing land snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusk, in the family Helicidae, the typical snails. [4] Archaeological recovery at the Ancient Roman site of Volubilis, in Morocco, illustrates prehistoric exploitation of O. lactea by humans. [5]