Aggressive behavior in snails?!

[borisigorthesnails]

Hi there. Hope everyone had a good start into the year!

I have seen something very interesting in my snails behavior.

My 2 years old Roman snail Igor was eating salad. My garden snail Dimitri came along from the right side and started climbing over Igor. Suddenly Igor stopped eating, put his head up and pulled his mouth a little bit in, like if he was disgusted by something. Dimitri continued to climb over Igor, which Igor didn’t seem to like and like out of nowhere, he turned his head around and just climbed onto Dimitri. Dimitri in return just started crawling away, with Igor more and more pressing onto him, even following him up the tank wall for a short while, until Dimitri got out of Igor’s grip, Igor turned around and continued munching on his salad.

I never would have thought I would see this kind of behavior in snails. It looked aggressive, like Igor was saying to Dimitri: “Do not climb on me while eating!”

Other times they don’t act this way, this was so out of character for them both and I was really surprised by it.

Like, what was that? It looked really hostile from Igor’s side!

[snaileyhammy]

Hey! One was a garden snail correct? Garden snails aren’t generally hostile it’s usually gals that are hostile, or so I’ve heard. Snails have no need for violence so I don’t think this is what they were doing.

[slugs]

Jan 2, 2021 13:32:42 GMT borisigorthesnails said:

Hi there. Hope everyone had a good start into the year!

I have seen something very interesting in my snails behavior.

My 2 years old Roman snail Igor was eating salad. My garden snail Dimitri came along from the right side and started climbing over Igor. Suddenly Igor stopped eating, put his head up and pulled his mouth a little bit in, like if he was disgusted by something. Dimitri continued to climb over Igor, which Igor didn’t seem to like and like out of nowhere, he turned his head around and just climbed onto Dimitri. Dimitri in return just started crawling away, with Igor more and more pressing onto him, even following him up the tank wall for a short while, until Dimitri got out of Igor’s grip, Igor turned around and continued munching on his salad.

I never would have thought I would see this kind of behavior in snails. It looked aggressive, like Igor was saying to Dimitri: “Do not climb on me while eating!”

Other times they don’t act this way, this was so out of character for them both and I was really surprised by it.

Like, what was that? It looked really hostile from Igor’s side!

Hey! I’ve been keeping some snails for a while, and my snails do this too. I haven’t seen any biting or problems, I think its just they see something and have to climb it. The only issue I could see here is if the ‘aggressor’ is larger, in which case there could be problems with mantle collapse. Best of luck!

[snaileyhammy]

Snails cannot see very well and usually don’t have good direction, most of the time they don’t know that there friends are there and climb right over them. I don’t think garden snails (helix aspersa) are violent at all, so like I said I don’t think this is what you saw. Goodluck and happy new year!

[borisigorthesnails]

Sorry for the late response, I was kind of busy. XC

Thanks for the responses. I later also suspected it was nothing, but it kind of surprised me (looked pretty weird) and still wanted to share my thoughts.