Giant African Land Snail Factfile
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Scientific Name : Achatina fulica*
World Distribution
Giant African land snails* are found across East Africa.
Habitat
The snail's ideal habitat is tropical rainforest, but they can also survive in many other habitats such as grassland, wetland and agricultural areas.
Feeding
They eat a wide variety of leaves, fruits and vegetables. Inside the snail's mouth is something called a "radula". This is rather like a sharp file that the snail scrapes across its food. In this way snails can gobble up large quantities of plants.
In order to grow a hard shell snails must have a source of calcium in their food. In captivity this is usually given as a cuttlefish bone. If it is quiet you can hear the snail's radula scraping away at the hard surface!
Predators
A great many animals (including people) eat giant African land snails.
Breeding
Like all snails, giant African land snails are hermaphrodites, which means that they have both male and female sex organs. Therefore any two snails can breed. This involves them intertwining their bodies and firing a "dart" containing sperm into each other. Each snail will then dig a shallow hole in the soil and lay up to 400 eggs. These take approximately one month to hatch (depending on the temperature and moisture content of the soil).
Baby snails are about 4mm long and look like tiny, transparent versions of their parents, complete with tiny shell. Their first meal will be their egg shell, and after that they start eating leaves. They grow very quickly.