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Project Noah Nature School
A beautiful Tree Snail with pink stripes on a dark brown body. It was about 3 cm fully extended. The shell was an orange color, very fragile and almost translucent. It hardly seemed that the snail would fit inside that shell.
Found at night on a wall below overhanging forest trees. Semi-rural residential area, San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico 2,200 meters.
Spotted on Jun 4, 2019
Submitted on Jun 7, 2019
5 Comments
I think these are quite voracious when it comes to eating other snails and slugs. This species was introduced to Hawaii to control the giant African snail, and it wiped out the local species instead. I think Hawaii and Australia are very similar -all the wrong things are unleashed there. Will we ever learn?
Thank you Neil, it does look very similar. I'm looking deeper. I hadn't even known there were predatory snails that eat other snails and slugs.
I'm wondering if this could be a rosy wolf snail - http://www.jaxshells.org/p42aa.htm Perhaps there's colour variation within the species, but the shell is the same shape and the snail has a stripe. A good place to start your search. Euglandina rosea is native to Central America, but introduced elsewhere. Or perhaps there's a similar species within the genus that's endemic to Mexico? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euglandina...
Thank you Neil :)
Excellent spotting, Lauren. That is one beautiful snail.