Most terrestrial snails are hermaphrodites which means that they possesses both male and female reproductive organs, especially consistent among land snails and most marine snails.
Trapdoor snails and some freshwater and marine species of snails (apple, golden Inca, four horned, periwinkles, etc.) are not hermaphrodites. They can only reproduce sexually.
Most snails like hermaphroditic snail lays eggs but some, like the trapdoor snail, give live birth.
How Do Snails Reproduce?
Snails need to find another snail to mate with.
Snails breed sexually as often as possible.
Snails reach sexual maturity by the time they are one to three years old.
Snails can "mate" with themselves and thus only one can reproduce in an aquarium or pond.
When two mature snails meet during the breeding season (late spring or early summer), mating is initiated by one snail piercing the skin of the other snail with a calcified 'love dart'.
The exact purpose of the 'love dart' is not fully understood but it seems to stimulate the other snail into exchanging small packets of sperm.
After mating is complete the snails will produce eggs internally, which are fertilized by the sperm that has been exchanged.
Up to about a month after mating both individuals lays about a hundred small white fertilized eggs in a nest underground in damp soil, where they stay until they are ready to hatch.
If the conditions remain suitable for the eggs, snails will begin to hatch after about 14 days.
Newly hatched snails have a small fragile shell. It takes two years for them to reach maturity.
Reflection: Before I found out how snails reproduce, I thought that snails are very slow moving and boring creatures. But now I think that they are amazing. I never knew that a living creature could have be both male and female. I found that they have a very special way of reproducing. This helps them to survive through many centuries. I felt that this research really helps me to explore even more interesting things like snails. I think that this is good and we should have this kind of research more often.
Snail Facts
