A1ana Low, age 12, of Quitman, Texas or her question:
Are there male and female snails?
Among the simple animals, there is no family life as we understand it. The tiny one celled amoeba multiplies by dividing into two. The little blob of jelly simply becomes twins. There are no parents or grandparents and no amoeba dies of old age. With more advanced animals, two parents are required to produce a new generation. But only the most advanced animals have a family life as we know it.
The oysters, earthworms and snails are a lot more advanced than the amoeba. But compared with birds and cats, they are Very simple animals indeed. Andy's readers learned that certain oysters spend some of their lives males and some as females. Every earthworm is both a mother and `father at all times and so is a snail.
If you want a litter of pet rabbits, you must start with a pair, one male and one female. But any two snails can produce baby snails so long as the parents are of the same sort. After mating, the pair have no interest in each other and each goes its separate way. For snails are far too simple to have any sensitive emotions for each other or for anything else, including their offspring,
In time, each parent snail lays a batch of eggs. Each snail is mother t o its own eggs and father to the egq'g laved by the other snail. And neither of them could care less, Each tiny egg is in a capsule encased in the slippery, silvery trail left behind as the parent snail crawls over the ground.
It is interesting to examine .a number of snail trails with a pocket lens or a magnifying glass. The tiny eggs are clear as glass. You can see the tiny snail shell which begins to grow even before the snail hatches. If your magnifier is powerful enough, you can see the tiny embryos heart slowly beating.
As soon as it hatches, the baby snail eats its own egg case. This provides the tiny body with lime which is used to strengthen the shell, After that first meal, the shell darkens and loses its glassy look.
The baby snails, too small to be noticed then crawl off to find a meal of molds and mildew. They will be flzlly grown in about two years. Those that survive will then be ready to hand on life and each will become both a mother and a father.
At full speed, a grown snail can craw. two inches in a minute, and he never crawls more than a few hundred yards away from where he hatched. Using all his powers, he can dust manage t o get enough to eat and to hide in his shell from his enemies and the dry weather. He could riot possibly cope with a complicated family life.