Falling or jumping?

[actos]

I'd read about snails falling from the tank walls/roof and cracking their shells, but I'd never seen it happen to Dave or his babies (they live in separate tanks, and seem very confident in sliming around and even sleeping on the plastic).

Until a few days ago, when I noticed a couple of baby falls. I heard the sound of tiny, light snails hitting the moist soil, but when I looked, they all seemed fine, no cracks visible, all moving towards the fresh cucumber slices on the floor.

Well, since then, every time I feed the babies, I hear more and more of them falling! I think they just want to get to the food double quick, and throw themselves off the walls. They must have realised it gets them to the food faster than just sliming down...

I'm not sure what to do. At the moment they're still tiny, and there is no visible damage on any of them. I'm worried, though, that they will get used to "jumping" and get injured when they grow bigger and heavier. Maybe I should be giving them more food - could it be that they're hungry??? There's usually a little leftover food in the morning, but not always...

Any advice?

[Sarah]

Snails can drop from the roofs of their enclosures with alarming regularity. This is natural behaviour - in the wild snails will drop from branches to escape predators. As to whether they do it to get to the food quicker, who knows?

The only thing you can do is make sure the substrate is deep enough to protect the shells when the snails fall, and to make sure none of the cage decor is hard enough to damage shells, so no rocks, no ceramic bowls, no ornaments etc.

[actos]

Ah, you see, I hadn't realised it was done on purpose!

In terms of what they're falling on, the substrate is thick and soft, and there are no hard surfaces as such, so they should be alright. I hope!

[mechangel]

Fake plants with big leaves helped me a bit with this issue, I never thought they were doing it on purpose though! Haha!

[shaydeesnail]

Luckily I've never noticed mine doing this! But I've heard of other people's snails doing it. As my tanks are quite tall I make sure to use lots of substrate and then a nice thick "carpet" of moss just in case they take up skydiving any time soon!

[pinkunicorn]

Lol, now I have this image of snails dropping like pop! pop! pop! from the ceiling when the cukes arrive. Slugs use slime ropes to do that, I've never seen them drop by themselves. But they do rope down if they smell fish food. It's hilarious, little pairs of antennas going like ZOING!! and heads popping up, whirling around to locate the source of the smell! And then they rush for the food as fast as they can, sliming or roping down.