Prickly snail
Acanthinula aculeata
The prickly snail is a tiny land snail, only about 2 millimetres wide. Its brown shell has ridges with little spines on them, so it looks prickly. The snail inside is grey with a white foot.
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 Estonia, Britain, Ireland and Poland
Length
1.9 to 2.1 mm (0.07 to 0.08 in)
the width of the shellCan it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It is so small that you need sharp eyes to even find it.
What does it eat?
Like other little land snails, it scrapes up plant bits and rotting leaves.
How big is it?
How long is it?
🍚3 of them in a row are as long as one grain of rice🍽️needs 6 minutes to cross a dinner table
How big is Prickly snail compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
Prickly snail about 0.01 km/h (0.01 mph)
A garden snail about 0.05 km/h (0.03 mph)
A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
Its whole shell is about as big as a pinhead.
2
The shell is a little taller than it is wide, and the opening is perfectly round.
3
It breathes air, like garden snails, and lives on land.
4
It also lives in Estonia.
you asked
Most asked questions about Prickly snail
?How big is the prickly snail?
Its shell is only about 2 millimetres across, about the size of a pinhead.
?Why is it called the prickly snail?
Its brown shell has raised ridges with small spines on them.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Acanthinula aculeata
- Group
- Snails, slugs and worms
- Family
- Valloniidae
- Classification
- Gastropoda > Stylommatophora > Valloniidae
- Lives on
- Europe
Where the facts come from
- Acanthinula aculeata (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by H. Zell. CC BY-SA 3.0, 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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