How Long Do Snails Sleep? ~ WildLife-TK

snail

Snails sleep on and off in periods of 13-15 hours. Then they stay awake for the next 30 hours. They have a 3-day sleep cycle. They can also hibernate for a period of up to 3 years straight.

Overview

This is one of the most frequently searched questions in Google. Beats me why a lot of people have developed a fascination in the sleeping habits of snails. It might be that they saw a lot of snails on their gardens. Or it can also be that someone saw a snail the day before and it’s still in the same position the following day. So, to satisfy your innate sense of curiosity, I’ll be answering this burning question in this article. I’ll also give you some interesting and bizarre facts about snails.

Where do they live?

You can find snails everywhere. You probably have a resident snail in your own garden. You’ll probably see one attached to the surface of a wall or your own fence.

Snails are also called gastropods. They are mollusks that belong to the class Gastropoda. Snails and slugs belong to the gastropod family. This family makes up around 80 percent of all mollusks. Gastropods live throughout the world. They live in equatorial regions. You can even find them in the Arctic and the Antarctic regions. While most of them live on land, some species have evolved and can survive in the water.

Among invertebrates, land snails belong to the most widely distributed group. Snails live on five continents. They can even survive in the sub-Antarctic region. Snails are so hardy that they can survive in sub-zero conditions. In the North American continent alone, there are more than 500 native species of snails. These native snails coexist with other species that came from other continents.

What kind of sleeping habits do they have?

These gastropods thrive in areas where moisture is in abundance. A moist environment is critical to their survival. Snails often schedule their sleep around weather conditions. This is one reason why there will be days when you won’t see any snails. Then, there will be days when snails seem to magically appear out of nowhere.

I’ve mentioned earlier that snails sleep for a few hours and can be active for up to 30 hours. Thirty hours is on the low side. In 2011, the results of research carried out at the University of Toronto were published. In the said research, they were able to confirm that snails do indeed sleep. The researchers wanted to confirm that snails really sleep and not just rest. They conducted this by measuring the snails’ response time to stimuli. They tapped on the shell of sleeping snails. They also tried offering food to the snails. They observed some of the snails for 79 days so that researchers could get a better insight on their sleeping habits.

Their research indicated that instead of a 24-hour daily cycle, a snail’s sleep cycle can last up to three days. In a 13 to 15-hour period, snails would sleep in around seven bouts. Then follows the 30 hours of activity I mentioned earlier. They also found out that even if snails lose sleep during their normal sleeping period, they don’t need to make up for it. This is amazing considering how cranky some humans can be if they lose even a few minutes worth of sleep.

Fun Facts About Snails

Snails and Sex

Snails are hermaphrodites. A hermaphrodite is an animal that possesses both male and female sex organs. So, they can reproduce on their own. However, they still need the help of others in the fertilization of their eggs. This is the part where they need to mate.

Snails need to copulate in order to get their eggs to hatch. Snails engage in a battle in order to determine who will give the semen and who will receive. The stronger among the two assumes the role of the male. There is a theory that this mating ritual is important in order to ensure that their offspring will be strong. The semen needs to come from the stronger snail because they don’t want weak or sick semen fertilizing the egg. Of course, this is all just conjunctions. Until we learn to communicate with gastropods, we will never be 100 percent sure.

A mating ritual between snails can last from one to three hours. And it may not have anything to do with their sexual prowess. Snails just do things really, really slow.

This mating ritual of snails gets even weirder than it is. Several species of hermaphroditic land snails have sex organs that serve as sharp, sword-like weapons. They fire these “love darts” into each other’s bodies while they mate. A snail’s love dart is primarily calcium. Promiscuous snails use these love darts to mate multiple times with different partners. They don’t do this just because a snail feels like having different partners. The motivation behind this action is so a snail can fertilize as many snails as possible. This is a way for snails to ensure that their species will not die out or go extinct.