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Sticker of Maritime garden snail
Bug card No. 2767 of 4,939

Maritime garden snail

Cernuella cisalpina
Eats: PlantsSnails, slugs and wormsGardens and meadowsNo legsNot an insect, but a bug cousin

The maritime garden snail is a small land snail with a white and brown striped shell. It breathes air and lives on land. It has a very unusual way of courting: it uses tiny love darts.

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
Southern Europe
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?
Like other land snails, it scrapes up plants with its rough tongue.
For real!Photo of Maritime garden snail
Picture by Alexander Mrkvicka. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Its shell has white and brown stripes.

2

When two of them meet to mate, they poke each other with tiny darts made of chalk, called love darts.

3

It is a small snail, much smaller than the big garden snails.

you asked

Most asked questions about Maritime garden snail

?What is a love dart?

A tiny, sharp dart that some snails poke into each other when they mate.

?Is the maritime garden snail dangerous?

No. It is a small, harmless snail.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Cernuella cisalpina
Group
Snails, slugs and worms
Family
Geomitridae
Classification
Gastropoda > Stylommatophora > Geomitridae
Lives on
Europe
Also known as
Maritime gardensnail

Where the facts come from

  1. Cernuella cisalpina (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 Alexander Mrkvicka. 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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Honey jarfor grown-ups