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Sticker of Shadow snail
Bug card No. 3800 of 4,939

Shadow snail

Urticicola umbrosus
Eats: PlantsSnails, slugs and wormsForests and woodsNo legsNot an insect, but a bug cousin

The shadow snail is a land snail from the mountain forests of central Europe. Its shell is thin and fragile, and you can almost see through it. The shell is flat, more wide than tall.

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
Mountain forests of Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Slovenia
Length
1 to 1.3 cm (0.39 to 0.51 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. Be gentle with it, because its shell breaks easily.
What does it eat?
Like other land snails, it scrapes up plants and soft leaves with its rough tongue.
For real!Photo of Shadow snail
Picture by Nefronus. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Shadow snail about 1.3 cm long (0.51 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)
as long as 2 grains of rice in a rowneeds 3 minutes to cross a dinner table

How big is Shadow 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 only about half as tall as it is wide.

2

The shell winds around five and a half times.

3

Underneath, the shell has a very wide hole in the middle, about half as wide as the whole shell.

4

It belongs to a family of snails known as hairy snails and their relatives.

you asked

Most asked questions about Shadow snail

?How big is the shadow snail?

Its shell is about 1 to 1.3 centimetres wide and only 5.5 to 7 millimetres tall.

?Where does the shadow snail live?

Mainly in mountain forests in Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Slovenia.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Urticicola umbrosus
Group
Snails, slugs and worms
Family
Hygromiidae
Classification
Gastropoda > Stylommatophora > Hygromiidae
Lives on
Europe

Where the facts come from

  1. Urticicola umbrosus (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 Nefronus. CC BY-SA 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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Also at home here: Forests and woods

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Honey jarfor grown-ups