Tag Archives: snail

Land snail

Land snail

At first glance (and most subsequent glances), the land snail seems useless.


“Oh thank goodness you’re here!” – a phrase the land snail never hears

Sure, there are some weirdos who believe you can eat it in a context outside starvation or bet loss. To those people I say: would you similarly defend eating a slug? If you wouldn’t eat an animal naked, don’t eat it just because it’s wearing something fancy.

In the 1850s, Jacques Benoit sought to discover a higher purpose for the land snail – namely, using its telepathic love connection to its snailmate[1] to create a telegraph. When the user poked the correct snail on one end, the conversational partner would witness the effect on the corresponding snail on their end, theoretically. This was known as “snail mail.” The failure of Benoit’s invention is easy to explain when one realizes that fourteen of the twenty-four snail couples were divorced within ten years.

Special powers

An instantaneous telepathic link to its one true love. The snail also boasts a tough shell, which it maintains through a calcium-heavy diet and regular applications of wax.


Due to a slimy residue left by it wherever it goes, the snail is one of the most easily trackable creatures, there in the conversation with those animals which leave riddle-clues and the sloth, which is probably still at the scene of the crime. It has to take in a lot of dairy to keep that shell in tip-top shape.

Number of legs

Not applicable.

What’s in the shell?


What if it fought a bear?

If Anthony Bourdain can vanquish/eat you, you probably don’t have a prayer against the bear.

Is it noble?


Final rating

Is it a boring snail? Yes. Of course it is. But it also has a powerful psychic sexual bond I can’t help but admire. We should all be so lucky.

I wish I were a snail

Truly an enviable animal.








[1]A snail soulmate.

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