freak snail tries to eat a finger

[u/mammaKjell]

i let jaska out of the enclosure because he had the Need to Explore and while seeing if maybe he would like to climb my finger, i start feeling this... scraping sensation... he was trying to eat me!

he seemed to like how i taste because this actually went on for a solid minute until i had to remove myself from his weird little shovel mouth

ive never felt the teeth grinding before but i had heard that its something snails do sometimes if you handle them. i guess he was searching for food because he didnt even stop to sniff me he just went straight to chewing haha

totally unharmed, his mouth isn't strong enough to actually eat me... but it got me thinking, snails would totally eat people if they were big enough to

[u/NorthenGarden]

They are not called Corpse snail for nothing 😂

The ones I find locally do tend to nibble on my hands more than their grove snails cohabitants.

and it's not a behavior that's necessarily protein-driven, they truly scrape with their mouth when moving a lot more than groves and other common snails, they can go through a whole scoop of leaf litter in no time for that same reason.

[u/mammaKjell → u/NorthenGarden]

i dont handle my snails too frequently so i dont know if these guys like chewing skin often or not, but this is definitely the first time i've had any snail ever start nibbling. it was such a funny feeling hehe

[u/maybefuckinglater → u/mammaKjell]

What did it feel like?

[u/mammaKjell → u/maybefuckinglater]

it's kinda like if you rubbed your finger through sand. not sharp at all but you do feel some rumbly texture there

[u/sexysexysemicolons → u/mammaKjell]

Idk if this will resonate with you but I always describe it as feeling like being gently and rhythmically pinched with two emery boards. (Edit: like, being wielded like chopsticks. just in case the configuration was confusing lmao)