Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Snails as a food date back to ancient times, with numerous cultures worldwide having traditions and practices that attest to their consumption. In the modern era snails are farmed, an industry known as heliciculture. The snails are collected after the rains and are put to "purge" (fasting).
Gastropods (snails and slugs) as the largest taxonomic class of the mollusca are very diverse: the group includes carnivores, herbivores, scavengers, filter feeders, and even parasites. In particular, the radula is often highly adapted to the specific diet of the various group of gastropods.
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]
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.
Nowadays, these snails are especially popular in French cuisine. In the English language, it is called by the French name escargot when used in cooking ( escargot simply means snail). Although this species is highly prized as a food, it is difficult to cultivate and is rarely farmed commercially.
A molluscivore is a carnivorous animal that specialises in feeding on molluscs such as gastropods, bivalves, brachiopods and cephalopods.Known molluscivores include numerous predatory (and often cannibalistic) molluscs, (e.g. octopuses, murexes, decollate snails and oyster drills), arthropods such as crabs and firefly larvae, and vertebrates such as fish, birds and mammals. [1]
Cepaea nemoralis is among the largest and, because of its bright colouration, one of the best-known snails in Western Europe. [6] The colour of the shell is highly variable; it ranges from brown, through pink, to yellow or even whitish, with or without one to five dark-brown bands. [8]
The gonads of adult snails are not inside the shell; they are in the head-foot region on the right side of the body. [5] There are no gonads present in juveniles with shell length of 2.2 mm. [24] Adults possess both testis and ovary in different levels of development. [5]