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The anatomy of a common air-breathing land snail: much of this anatomy does not apply to gastropods in other clades or groups. Snails are distinguished by an anatomical process known as torsion, where the visceral mass of the animal rotates 180° to one side during development, such that the anus is situated more or less above the head. This ...
Wentletraps are small, often white, very high-spired, predatory or ectoparasitic sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the family Epitoniidae. [1] The word wentletrap originated in Dutch (wenteltrap), and it means spiral staircase. These snails are sometimes also called "staircase shells", and "ladder shells".
These snails are pelagic and live at the surface of the ocean. Adult snails may not be capable of swimming, and die when they are detached from their rafts; Janthina janthina larvae, however, actively swim in the water column. [3] The adult snails prey upon (and live near to) one of several species of pelagic animals loosely known as jellyfish.
Determining whether some gastropods should be called sea snails is not always easy. Some species that live in brackish water (such as certain neritids) can be listed as either freshwater snails or marine snails, and some species that live at or just above the high tide level (for example, species in the genus Truncatella) are sometimes considered to be sea snails and sometimes listed as land ...
(pl.) aboiteaux A sluice or conduit built beneath a coastal dike, with a hinged gate or a one-way valve that closes during high tide, preventing salt water from flowing into the sluice and flooding the land behind the dike, but remains open during low tide, allowing fresh water precipitation and irrigation runoff to drain from the land into the sea; or a method of land reclamation which relies ...
Thus the common name "limpet" has very little taxonomic significance in and of itself; the name is applied not only to true limpets (the Patellogastropoda), but also to all snails that have a simple, broadly conical shell, and either is not spirally coiled, or appears not to be coiled in the adult snail. In other words, the shell of all limpets ...
[31] [32] In Mayan mythology, the snail is associated with sexual desire, being personified by the god Uayeb. [33] Snails were widely noted and used in divination. [31] The Greek poet Hesiod wrote that snails signified the time to harvest by climbing the stalks, while the Aztec moon god Tecciztecatl bore a snail shell on his back.
Viviparidae, sometimes known as the river snails or mystery snails, are a family of large aquatic gastropod mollusks, being some of the most widely distributed operculate freshwater snails. This family is classified in the informal group Architaenioglossa according to the taxonomy of the Gastropoda by Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005 .