Charles Koshgarian. age 12. of Milwaukee

Do snails have teeth?

The snail is a mollusk. cousin to the clam and the oyster. These are simple animals and we can't expect a great deal from them4 Clams and oysters don't even have heads. Our snail does. He has a head with two eye stalks and has one fancy foot which he can extend from his underside. He is called a gastropod ‑ a stomach‑foot.

He has a mouth. for we can watch him nibble away on a moldy leaf. However. a pair of chomping jaws is too much to expect from a mollusk ‑ even a gastropod. The snail has no jaws. Can he have teeth without jaws? Yes he can. The snail is full of surprises. for he has hundreds of teeth.

True they are very. very tiny teeth. They are arranged on a flat strip inside his mouth. He uses them as a sort of file to shred up his food before swallowing it. In fact his strip of teeth is called a radula. which means a little file.