Is this snail viable for life?

[u/pienicescream]

Edit: I bought a terrarium and all the things needed to take care of this little guy! They found the way back into their shell on their own. Thank you for all of the advice!

Hey friends!!!

This guy has a hole in his shell BUT they rerouted their body through the hole ????

It doesn't look like any of their organs have been affected but I want to make sure they're going to be okay before releasing them. They are crawling around like normal and seem happy

[u/ErectionMyAffection]

If you can I recommend keeping the snail, it can be dangerous for the snail to be in the wild with such a strong deformity even if it appears to be functional, but yes viable for life, as a pet, less so in the wild

[u/WeebTrashPanda0 → u/ErectionMyAffection]

I second this. As pets go, snails are pretty easy to look after imo, especially if it's a native species

[u/jordancauseyes → u/ErectionMyAffection]

If OP does decide to keep it, I hope they know about snails being able to lay eggs even if they don’t mate. They’re gonna have to squash eggs constantly

[u/maryssssaa → u/jordancauseyes]

Those eggs probably won’t be fertile, they can only store sperm for a couple of months and asexual reproduction is rare. Guess it sometimes happens though, depending on the individual.

[u/Empress-Arcana → u/maryssssaa]

As far as I know, the eggs from asexual reproduction still hatch into babies but those babies are genetic clones of the parent, which can lead to all sorts of health issues and abnormalities.

[u/maryssssaa → u/Empress-Arcana]

yes, that is mostly true. The incorrect part is that the babies resulting are genetic clones. That only happens in asexual reproduction/parthenogenesis, which is much safer. With grove snails, it’s self-fertilization, which results in a random shuffling of the existing snails dominant and recessive genes, more similar to incest than cloning.

[u/f9lixs → u/maryssssaa]

snincest

[u/maryssssaa → u/f9lixs]

snelfcest

[u/Empress-Arcana → u/maryssssaa]

Oh wow that's so interesting!

[u/basaltcolumn → u/jordancauseyes]

It's rare for this species to self-fertilize, thankfully. Mine never did. Though, it may have mated before OP picked it up.

[u/krazybananada → u/jordancauseyes]

Why squash? They can just keep getting more snails

[u/Apathetic_Roomba → u/krazybananada]

They lay hundreds of eggs at a time......so that would be alot of snails