Garden Snail

The garden snail glides on a ribbon of mucus at a top speed of about a meter a minute, its soft body protected by a coiled shell it can retreat into fully when danger or drought arrives. It is a hermaphrodite — each individual carries both male and female reproductive organs — and after mating it lays dozens of pearly eggs in the soil. In dry weather it seals the shell opening with a papery curtain of dried mucus and waits for rain, one of the reasons it has followed humans into gardens across the world.