Size of adult snails

[Val]

Hi all,
Where the eventual size a snail will grow to is written it is often followed by "But rarely grow to this size in captivity" My question is Why?? With all this nutrition why do they still not reach the size they would in the wild? Very curious!!!

[Arno]

Thats a very good question.I think it has to do with climate conditions;you never get the same conditions in your tank as the snails have in the wild,and maybe tank size too.

[Paul]

Perhaps, the speed of growth is a factor. In the wild they grow slowly and live longer generally and reach sexual maturity slower. Maybe they are related somehow.

Another reason is population sizes. Looking through snail literature turns up measurements of lots of what we would call small snails. There is quite a lot of variation in the wild whereas our snails often come from a handful of parent snails so who knows how that affects things. And we don't kill small or weak snails. Natural selection may favour the larger and greedier snails.

Also, food is never far away for our snails and as a consequence they are probably quite lazy. Is exercise a factor?

But it doesn't explain it fully and I agree it is curious. But then, is this smaller size not the case for most things in captivity?

I'm now leaning towards Arno's suggestion of tank size. Perhaps if you converted a room into a snail tank you'd get bigger snails.

[Paul]

One last thing, because we have European day/night cycles this could affect things. They may need a very regulated day and night like equatorial Africa to allow their metabolism to function at full burn. And I was recently watching a BBC program on the effect of the moon on growth rates/sizes and breeding of animals in Africa. They seemed to think animals from the equator that can't rely on daylight to indicate season or time of year rely heavily on the moon. And this affects their natural bio-rhythms which in turn affect eating and breeding. And seeing as snails are mainly nocturnal, that doesn't sound at all unreasonable.

Who's getting a moon lamp then, and a thing that rotates it round your tank, in seasonal cycles?, lol