2023-07-06 09:27:00
When I pick berries and lift the branches of the berry bush, I disturb many a small animal. A stippling moth, a microbutterfly, a bug, a snail, and another snail.
I also see those snails when I pull out a ground elder or cleavers, or just mess around in the garden. There are infinitely more than you see at first glance. At first glance you don’t see one.
They are snails with a cone-shaped snail shell, which is wider and flatter than many other snail shells. And much smaller. Half a centimeter is usually enough, although there may be one of seven millimeters in between.
They are hair snails, not to be confused with hair snails or boot snails. A hair snail is a snail with hair. The hair snail was previously called hairy snail, although mollusc connoisseurs often use the scientific name Trochulus hispidus.
I have remarkably few snails in the garden. This is partly due to the dry spring. It can really be infested with slugs here. Also shagreen snails were always numerous, large snails. The same applies to the somewhat smaller shrub snails. These three categories eat up my flowers and I always throw them out of my garden with a huge bow; I think this has also shrunk their overwhelming numbers. Garden snails, with those rust-brown or yellow houses, with or without black lines, I leave them alone. There are still quite a few, because thanks to their house they are less sensitive to dehydration than slugs.
Perhaps hair snails fill the living space of the diminished species. They are also safe in their houses. They are covered with tiny hairs, like flaxen ring beards, but the largest houses lack them. Those are old hair snails; the bugs seem to be able to live up to two years. And as they approach that old age, hair snails go bald. In this they resemble humans, especially men.
Three times a week, biologist Koos Dijksterhuis writes about something that grows or blooms. Read his previous Nature Diaries here.
Nature diary
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