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Sticker of San Gabriel chestnut
Bug card No. 3732 of 4,939

San Gabriel chestnut

Glyptostoma gabrielense
Eats: Leftovers and dead thingsSnails, slugs and wormsForests and woodsNo legsNot an insect, but a bug cousin

The San Gabriel chestnut is a land snail with a flat, dark chestnut-brown shell and a dark grey body. It lives only in a small part of the mountains near Los Angeles in California. When summer gets hot and dry, it hides underground and waits for the rain.

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
California, only in a small part of the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena
Length
3 cm (1.2 in)
the width of the shell
Top speed
about 0.03 km/h (0.02 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?
It eats old, rotting bits of plants, together with the tiny fungi and germs that help break them down.
For real!Photo of San Gabriel chestnut
Picture by Grigory Heaton. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

San Gabriel chestnut about 3 cm long (1.2 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)
as long as 5 grains of rice in a rowneeds 2 minutes to cross a dinner table

How big is San Gabriel chestnut compared to YOU?

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

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It lives only in a strip of mountains about 24 kilometres long, near the city of Pasadena.

2

From about June to October it rests underground, because the summers there are very dry.

3

In the cool, wet months of the year it comes out and moves around.

4

Its shell is flat like a little disk, about 3 centimetres across and 1.4 centimetres high.

5

It used to live in the Dominguez Hills too, but it has disappeared from there.

you asked

Most asked questions about San Gabriel chestnut

?Where does the San Gabriel chestnut snail live?

Only in a small part of the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena, California, in damp canyons.

?What does the San Gabriel chestnut snail eat?

Rotting bits of plants, and the tiny fungi and germs that grow on them.

?How big is the San Gabriel chestnut snail?

Its shell is about 3 centimetres across.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Glyptostoma gabrielense
Group
Snails, slugs and worms
Family
Megomphicidae
Classification
Gastropoda > Stylommatophora > Megomphicidae
Lives on
North America
Also known as
San Gabriel chestnut snail

Where the facts come from

  1. Glyptostoma gabrielense (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 Grigory Heaton. 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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