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Snail is a common name loosely applied to shelled gastropods. The name is most often applied to land
snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name snail is also used for most of
the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have a coiled shell that is large enough for the animal to
retract completely into. When the word "snail" is used in this most general sense, it includes not just land snails
but also numerous species of sea snails and freshwater snails. Gastropods that naturally lack a shell, or have
only an internal shell, are mostly called slugs, and land snails that have only a very small shell (that they cannot
retract into) are often called semi-slugs.

Snails have considerable human relevance, including as food items, as pests, as vectors of disease, and their
shells are used as decorative objects and are incorporated into jewelry. The snail has also had some cultural
significance, and has even been used as a metaphor.

Snails that respire using a lung belong to the group Pulmonata, while those with gills form a polyphyletic
group; in other words, snails with gills form a number of taxonomic groups that are not necessarily more
closely related to each other than they are related to some other groups. Both snails that have lungs and
snails that have gills have diversified so widely over geological time that a few species with gills can be found
on land and numerous species with lungs can be found in freshwater. Even a few marine species have lungs.

Snails can be found in a very wide range of environments, including ditches, deserts, and the abyssal depths of
the sea. Although land snails may be more familiar to laymen, marine snails constitute the majority of snail
species, and have much greater diversity and a greater biomass. Numerous kinds of snail can also be found in
fresh water.

Most snails have thousands of microscopic tooth-like structures located on a banded ribbon-like tongue called a
radula. The radula works like a file, ripping food into small pieces. Many snails are herbivorous, eating plants or
rasping algae from surfaces with their radulae, though a few land species and many marine species are
omnivores or predatory carnivores.

Several species of the genus Achatina and related genera are known as giant African land snails; some grow to
15 in (38 cm) from snout to tail, and weigh 1 kg (2 lb).[1] The largest living species of sea snail is Syrinx
aruanus; its shell can measure up to 90 cm (35 in) in length, and the whole animal with the shell can weigh up
to 18 kg (40 lb).

The snail Lymnaea makes decisions by using only two types of neuron: one deciding whether the snail is
hungry, and the other deciding whether there is food in the vicinity.[2]

The largest known land gastropod is the African giant snail Achatina achatina, the largest recorded specimen of
which measured 39.3 centimetres (15.5 in) from snout to tail when fully extended, with a shell length of
27.3 cm (10.7 in) in December 1978. It weighed exactly 900 g (2 lb). Named Gee Geronimo, this snail was
owned by Christopher Hudson (195579) of Hove, East Sussex, UK, and was collected in Sierra Leone in June
1976.[3]

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