A boy in Great Britain tiptoes into the ocean. He reaches down to the sandy floor. Eureka! He pulls out a gooey snail in a castle-shaped shell. A whelk!
In Thailand, a kid swimming in fresh water spots a red-rimmed melania. This snail lives in a shell shaped like an ice cream cone.
A girl is busy playing in Tanzania when she spots . . . YIKES! . . . a huge snail creeping toward her on land. It’s eight inches long—a giant African land snail.
All these finds belong to an animal group called gastropods. Think of gastropods in two categories: snails—which have shells—and slugs, which don’t.
God made this family of animals ubiquitous. (That’s a 10-dollar word meaning they show up everywhere.) Milk snails in the garden. Sea slugs in the ocean. Spike-topped apple snails in the freshwater fish tank. Altogether, around 65,000 types of gastropods exist on Earth.
God loves variety. And He loves to create things that work. Gastropods are useful. Here’s how:
- Hang the old houses of sea snails (conch, limpet, and whelk) from your neck as jewelry.
- Rely on your typical garden snail to eat up plant waste and leave nutritious poo behind for your plants. Field slugs love gardens too. (But if they start eating your flowers, you could try sprinkling crumbled egg shells to keep them away.)
- Freshwater snails? Outdoors, they’ll gobble up dead fish, algae, and plant waste. Indoors, let them float around your fish tank making itty bitty baby snails faster than you can keep track.
- Boil or fry up the crawlies—big and small—for dinner. But DO NOT EVER, even if you’re triple-dog-dared, eat a land snail raw. This can spread a dangerous parasite to the human brain. Just say no to brain worms.
