АХАТИН.РФ

Achatina snail family is a unit of snails with eyes on the ends of the tentacles. They are real ground pulmonary snails and the most highly organized once among gastropods.

These snails  have a pair of retractable tentacles with the eyes on the ends of them. There are a couple of short additional tentacles which play the double role of "fingers" and chemical analisarors. The shell covering the body of a snail performs 3 main functions:

1. Protecting the soft body from mechanical damage during moving;
2. Protection from external enemies;
3. Protection of the body from drying out.

The shell is very solid and simply huge. It is so hard and heavy that  Achatina shells were used on tobacco plantations as irons to smooth out the tobacco leaves.

If Achatina lives in a humid environment, its shell is more delicate and transparent. In dry and hot climate shell becomes thick and white to reflect sunlight.

Achatina itself is very heavy and massive. If only few snails decide "to meet" on a tree branch, this branch may break off.

Due to above-ground existence  Achatina has well-developed base on which the waves pass when it moves. There are two leg glands on its sole that produce mucus, which contributes to the movement of a snail on the dry surface.

Achatina wrinkled skin of the body is additionaly folded to encrease the surface because it plays an important role in the process of cutaneous respiration which supplements lung breathing.

As any other alive being  Achatina has senses:

1. Pair of eyes to distinguish the degree of illumination. Achatina is also capable of seeing objects at the distance of approximately 1 cm. The eyes aren't the only tissues the snail feels the light with, it feels it with the whole body because it is  "stuffed" with light sensitive cells. Remember that these animals do not like very bright light. That's why if you use a bright lamp to warm the therrarium put any screen in front of it or throw on to the bottom half of pots or shards for the snail refuge  - so that they do not spend all their life sitting in the soil, hiding from the light,  thrusting out stems of their eyes only.

2. Terminal swelling of the tentacles are responsible for the smell or "chemical sense". In addition to them all upper surface of snail skin, head, front edge of the sole and the entrance of the respiratory cavity are able to analyse the chemicals. The reaction on chemical odors such as gasoline, alcohol or acetone occurs at the distance of approximately 4 cm from the source and is worse than the ability to distinguish the "food" smell. Achatina can "smell" melon from 0,5 m and cabbage - roughly from the same distance. A decomposing remains of trees and leaves attract snails from the distance a little bit more than 2 meters.

3. Sole and tentacles are tactile tissues.

We suppose that Achatina can't hear at all. The are examples with  loud scream or droops in the whistle when the cage lid is open, but the snails do not get scared and do not change their behavior. From the other side many masters report that their snails prefer some special types of music and move "vivilier" while "hearing" it. Everybody agrees that these animals are very calm, quiet and can't get scared  easily.

Despite the snails are hermaphrodites while breeding each individual plays the definitive role of male or female. The bigger one usually takes the female role and the smaller one - male. Two snails carefully gropes each other first, than a real love game begins and in the end they pressed each other's soles firmly. All ends with the exchange of gametes (spermatophore). As any others, snail eggs have a reserve of nutrients and are covered by the nutrient membrane. Achatina lays eggs in batches of 20-30 pieces into the holes in substrate, which buries. 2-3 weeks later the juvenile appear. They became adults in a 1,5 months time.

Term life Achatina in captivity is similar to the reported one in the nature - up to 10 years.

Enemies: Hedgehogs, mice, insects (krasotel, beetles, crickets, millipedes), birds, toads and frogs, moles, skunks, weasels, lizards, snails.

There aren't many sounds from Achatina .  As a night-time animal it can rustle sliding about the cage at night  or you can hear how its body rubs against the walls or the shell rattles against the glass (if the terrarium is from glass). When frightened, the snail abruptly pulles into the shell and then you can hear the squeaking or clicking. These are, perhaps, all Achatina sounds. In the light part of a day it usually sleeps hidden in the substrat till the very top of its shell.

Achatina - just a wonderful pet that can recognize its master, very easy to look after, almost silent at home(in contrary to dogs and cats), has no specific smell and does not cause allergies.

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