kissing shells?

[erica]

Hello,

Isaac's got a good inch or so of shell that's in poor condition - ridged and a lot thinner than the rest of his shell - from when he lived in the wild. Since baby arrived I've noticed she likes to climb onto his shell and 'kiss' this part.

At first I thought she was eating it but she doesn't leave rasping marks and it does look more like kissing than eating when she's on there. - she'll put her head to the shell, then pull away and put her head to another part.

i've also seen her munching away at the cuttle so she seems pretty full with her calcium. is it likely to be that she's just greedy and this is an easy part of shell for her to eat? or could there be more to it?

you're probably sick of hearing me worry about my first pampered snails but i'm so new to this i want to be sure i'm doing everything right.
e

[Arno]

I guess its just her crawling on that part of the shell,doing nothing much other than that.....

[goose]

I have notice my baby tigers do that when they are 'testing' whether to crawl on something or not - they stretch their neck out and put their head on it if they like it they stick on and if not they draw back - sometimes several times - tried them with pear and don't think they were keen - they did it on that and moved on to the courgette instead. Think she is just being inquisitive they use their bottom eyes to test things out so she is probably just doing that I would think.

[Val]

Nope, not sick of hearing you worry about your snails, I was just the same when I first started keeping them, it comes from wanting to do things right for the sake of the snails.

val

[Moracai]

I like the kissing theory

[erica]

it just seems like kissing because i've seen her doing it five or six different times now, it's almost like she's tending to the weaker parts of his shell to look after him. - that's what we do to kids when they're hurt so might snails do it too?

[Miranda]

maybe if she eats lots of cuttle there could be some way of transfering it, maybe shes just cleaning him,my snailsclean each other by sweeping away the dirt with their necks!