Do snails fight?

[snailbutler]

I was wondering whether snails fight or if there is some way in which one snail will show dominance over another. One reason that I like snails is that they appear to be non-violent and have no natural weapons. However, am I simply being fooled into thinking this by their leisurely movement?

[ness]

Snails don't fight and there is no social heirachy in snail groups. They are docile. There are species of snails that eat other species, for example the Rosie Wolf snail, and Achatina immaculata var panthera will rasp and nibble at other snails, but the vast majority of snails you are likely to find advertised for sale are very gentle creatures.
Snails get along very well together without any problems. As long as they all thrive in a particular tank set-up you should be fine keeping different species together, and certainly same-species groups will get along very well.

I hope that helps

[coyote]

A very interesting question. Snails, being hermpahrodite, won't be prone to the territorial / mating disputes among species with distinct male/female sexes. However, I have seen aggression in an overcrowded garlic snail tank (Oxychilus alliarius). The aggression diminished when the population was split between 2 tanks.

[ness]

Oooh that's interesting Coyote
Do they rasp at each other?

[ness]

Thinking more on this - although the vast majority of snails you may find for sale are docile, there are many species of snail (mainly water-snails) that are carnivorus. I don't know how many of these eat their own kind or if any of them compete in any way.

on a different note I do now remember reading a discussion on snail growth in young snails, in that when a batch of snails are kept in crowded conditions some of them are slow to grow, but when placed in larger tanks, or seperated into several tanks these slow-growing snails started to grow faster. A theory put forward was that perhaps a chemical was given off by some snails that inhibit the growth of others. If this is the case i suppose you may say there could be a subtle hierachy going on. or perhaps some snails inhibit their own growth when over-crowded, perhaps because instinct tells them that big snails eat more and overcrowding means competition for food, so staying small means it wouldn't need to eat so much. Personally I would make a guess that it's the second suggestion, but perhaps it's something else entirely?

[crossless]

In nature bigger eat smaller animals food or faster one slowest ones food. I have noticed if you don't sprinkle food and calsium all over terrarium only faster ones eat full tummy and slower ones what is left. So that kind of greed I have seen easy to fix anyways.

To me that happened and I had to separate sleepy snail to hes own tank so he get energy and grow big he was really inactive because he didn't have any energy to move.

[Robert Nordsieck]

That is a rather difficult discussion. Was does "fighting" between snails mean?

When researching the love dart of the brown garden snail, the Canadian scientist Dr. Ronald Chase has discovered that those snails do something like "jousting" when they circle each other trying to hit the other snail with a love dart, avoiding to be hit by one themselves.

Then, marine slugs like Aplysia defend themselves with chemical agents (Aplysia ink) when they are attacked by othe sea slug species, which can be quite fierce. One might call that fighting.

Cepaea species bite each other when they mate (probably using their upper jaw). Would that qualify as fighting or rather as an aggressive form of sexuality?

Those are three examples that sprang into my mind.

Besides: You are aware of the fact that there are predatory snails which actively hunt other snails, including their conspecifics (which should make mating quite interesting, I presume)? But the herbivorous snails usually don't fight back, usually for want of a means to do so. There are strategies of evasion, of course, such as the "jumping slugs" of the American Northwest. But I'd say fighting includes aggression from both sides, doesn't it?

Kind regards
Robert

[snailbutler]

Thanks for your interesting replies. What a luxury to be able to call upon such a wealth of knowledge. I'll be moving seven of my achatina fulica (currently kept as a 4 and a 3) into one big tank in a couple of weeks. I'm not anticipating any disharmony (in fact I suspect my only problem will be that they'll get on rather too well), but given what I've read in this thread I'll be making sure that I distribute the food evenly around the big tank.
As for a definition of "fighting", the best I can come up with is: contact between individuals in which at least one party attempts to harm the interests of another. I'm sure there are problems with this definition though.
The issue of whether there has to be aggression on both sides is a complex one. If all the aggression was only from one party, I would still consider it as a fight, provided the other party was attempting to defend itself through any means except evasion. Another interesting aspect is whether a fight has to involve any physical contact at all, but I'm not going to attempt tackling that one because my brain is starting to hurt.
Aside from all that, I must say that I'm intrigued by the notion of a jumping slug.

[coyote]

May 9, 2011 21:53:55 GMT ness said:

Oooh that's interesting Coyote
Do they rasp at each other?

I observed 2 pairs of garlic snails trying to bite each other's heads. There was a quality to their movements that had a much more aggressive edge to it than any I observed during mating. Of course, I could be completely mistaken in my interpretation of what I witnessed.

[ness]

May 10, 2011 22:59:56 GMT coyote said:

May 9, 2011 21:53:55 GMT ness said:

Oooh that's interesting Coyote
Do they rasp at each other?

I observed 2 pairs of garlic snails trying to bite each other's heads. There was a quality to their movements that had a much more aggressive edge to it than any I observed during mating. Of course, I could be completely mistaken in my interpretation of what I witnessed.

Eeek!

[kikiandhersnails]

I was wondering the same thing, I have two full grown land garden snails in a 10 gallon tank with lots of food, calcium,sticks,rocks,and two hideaways. And I saw my snails come up to each other and were touching, I thought they were gonna start 'kissing' (kissing is something that snails do before mating, like pretend the @ is the shell and the / is the body, they do this: @/\@), anyways, when they started I thought they were kissing, but then one of my snails, Angus, drew back real suddenly from my other snail, Katy, and started moving away, and Katy's mouth opened and it was all red inside. Do snails bleed? I did not see any blood coming from Angus but they both just went away from each other after it. Sooo idk what happened. Help? I've had snails before, two years ago and they bred, but this has not happened before

[pinkunicorn]

Snails don't have blood like we do, but a fluid that flows freely between cells and tissues instead of blood vessels, carrying nutrients and oxygen to cells.

This also reminded me of a blog entry I read a while ago about two slug species fighting! Very interesting (and nice blog too). I can't find theexact post now, my phone's browser is driving me nuts with slowness but the blog is www.mypetslug.com . I thimk there was a link to the fightvideo on page two.

[kikiandhersnails]

Apr 27, 2012 21:40:44 GMT pinkunicorn said:

Snails don't have blood like we do, but a fluid that flows freely between cells and tissues instead of blood vessels, carrying nutrients and oxygen to cells.

This also reminded me of a blog entry I read a while ago about two slug species fighting! Very interesting (and nice blog too). I can't find theexact post now, my phone's browser is driving me nuts with slowness but the blog is www.mypetslug.com . I thimk there was a link to the fightvideo on page two.

Thanks, and btw what color is the fluid?

[tsrebel]

I've only witnessed agression in my aquatic snails (Pomacea bridgesii). They fight over food, even when they get more than enough. They bite each other, and you can see it hurts when the bitten snail retracts real fast.