SEX AMONG SNAILS.

The sex life of these common snails is anything but ordinary. First, they’re hermaphrodites, fitted with both male and female reproductive plumbing, and can mate with any member of their species they want.

Sounds easy, but the battle of the sexes is alive and well in gastropods.
The fundamental problem for snails, who are both male and female at the same time, is how you optimize both your male function and your female function,”

With garden snails, “courtship” is somewhat euphemistic. Their idea of foreplay is to stab each other with a tiny spike called a love dart. Here’s the play-by-play. Snails find mates using taste and smell. By waving their upper tentacles in the air—smelling—and tapping their lower ones on the ground—tasting—they pick up on the gooey trails of potential partners.

Then they follow the slime to finally mate.
The mating process is very slow – like everything else snails do – and it can take up to 12 hours. Once completed, the sperm can remain in the snail for up to a year, but usually snails lay eggs within two weeks. Snails are mature enough to start reproducing from one month and a half to 5 years, depending on species.

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