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Sticker of Gray-foot lancetooth snail
Bug card No. 2005 of 4,939

Gray-foot lancetooth snail

Haplotrema concavum
Eats: Other bugs and small animalsSnails, slugs and wormsForests and woodsNo legsNot an insect, but a bug cousin

The gray-foot lancetooth is a land snail with a surprise: it is a hunter. It slides through the fallen leaves in the forests of North America looking for other snails to eat. It breathes air, just like we do.

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
Eastern North America, from southern Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, in damp leafy forests
Top speed
about 0.03 km/h (0.02 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless to people. Wash your hands after holding one, like after touching any wild animal.
What does it eat?
It eats other snails. It is one of the few snails that hunts instead of munching plants.
For real!Photo of Gray-foot lancetooth snail
Picture by William Greene Binney (1833-1909; U.S.A.), (scanned by Tim Ross). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It lives in the leaf litter near the bottom of trees and under rotting logs.

2

It hunts other kinds of snails, which is quite unusual for a snail.

3

It lives in damp forests with trees that drop their leaves, from Canada all the way south to Florida.

you asked

Most asked questions about Gray-foot lancetooth snail

?What does the gray-foot lancetooth eat?

Other snails. It is a meat-eating snail.

?Where does the gray-foot lancetooth live?

In damp leafy forests in eastern North America, under logs and fallen leaves.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Haplotrema concavum
Group
Snails, slugs and worms
Family
Haplotrematidae
Classification
Gastropoda > Stylommatophora > Haplotrematidae
Lives on
North America
Also known as
Gray-footed lancetooth

Where the facts come from

  1. Haplotrema concavum (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 William Greene Binney (1833-1909; U.S.A.), (scanned by Tim Ross). Public domain, 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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More from the same group: Snails, slugs and worms

Also at home here: Forests and woods

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