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Sticker of Slender amber snail
Bug card No. 3888 of 4,939

Slender amber snail

Oxyloma elegans
Eats: PlantsSnails, slugs and wormsPonds, rivers and shoresNo legsNot an insect, but a bug cousin

The slender amber snail is a small land snail from Europe. Its thin shell is yellowish, the colour of amber, and has only a few turns. It likes wet places like marshes.

Fun fact: this one is not an insect at all, it has no legs! But kids find it on every bug hunt, so it lives in Bug Wiki too.
Lives in
Europe, including Great Britain and Ireland, in marshes and other wet places
Length
6 to 8 mm (0.24 to 0.31 in)
the width of the shell
Top speed
about 0.02 km/h (0.01 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. Wash your hands after holding one, like after touching any wild animal.
What does it eat?
Like other land snails, it eats plants. It crawls around on them in damp places.
For real!Photo of Slender amber snail
Picture by Michal Maňas. CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Slender amber snail about 8 mm long (0.31 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)
small enough to sit on your fingernailneeds 3 minutes to cross a dinner table

How big is Slender amber snail compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Its shell is taller than it is wide: 9 to 17 millimetres high, sometimes up to 20.

2

The last turn of the shell is very big, and the pointy top is short.

3

It belongs to a family of snails called amber snails.

you asked

Most asked questions about Slender amber snail

?How big is the slender amber snail?

Its shell is 6 to 8 millimetres wide and usually 9 to 17 millimetres tall.

?Where does the slender amber snail live?

In Europe, on plants in wet places such as marshes.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Oxyloma elegans
Group
Snails, slugs and worms
Family
Succineidae
Classification
Gastropoda > Stylommatophora > Succineidae
Lives on
Europe

Where the facts come from

  1. Oxyloma elegans (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Michal Maňas. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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Honey jarfor grown-ups