so the question is can a snail mate with a slug. the short answer is no most organisms prefer to mate with their own species and snails and slugs are different species.
Snails are hermaphrodites, having both male and female sexual organs with the ability to both fertilize and lay eggs. When two snails meet, they will vie for position on who is going to be the male or female. Generally, the deciding factor is which snail gets the better placement of the love dart.
That's when love is in the air. But 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.
Biology of slugs and snails
They are hermaphrodites - both members of a mating couple can lay eggs. Mating usually takes place from mid-autumn to mid-winter when favourable moist conditions return after summer. Two to four weeks after mating, spherical pearl-white eggs are laid into moist soil.
As the slugs dance they eventually intertwine and become excited. Both slugs insert their penises into the other slugs genital opening and take turns transferring sperm from one to the other. After much wriggling about and tugging the slugs separate and find an appropriate place to lay eggs.
Slugs evolved from snails by reducing the size of the shell and internalizing it (yes, most slugs have an internal shell), and there are likely to be consequences of reducing the shell. A snail with an external shell large enough for the body to pull back into.
They have both female and male reproductive cells (they are hermaphrodite). They don't actually need to mate with another snail in order to reproduce, self fertilisation is possible. After mating they lay around 80 white eggs in a damp, underground nest.
The simplest description is that slugs are snails without shells. Some of these mollusks do, in fact, have a shell, but those that do have internalized the shell and use it to store minerals.
In fact, snails and slugs are so closely related that their main differentiator is their shell. A gastropod without a shell is known as a slug, and vice versa. They aren't the same species, but the presence of the shell is what classifies the organism as a snail.
Snails are born with a small shell that slowly grows as they do. When it's time for a snail shell to grow, they have a flexible material that expands the shell and hardens on the inside, adding layers over time. Taking a snail out of its shell will kill it, not turn it into a slug.
Besides being hermaphrodites — all snails have both boy and girl parts — they stab each other with “love darts” as a kind of foreplay.
Most land snails are hermaphrodites (both male and female within one individual). During mating, sperm enters the partner's copulation pouch, which is not a safe haven because digestive processes begin! The hormones help the sperm escape that pouch so they can find their way to the fertilization chamber.
Snails called slipper limpets begin life as males, and become female as they grow. A new study shows that when two males are kept together and can touch one another, the larger one changes to female sooner, and the smaller one later. Contact, rather than chemicals released into the water, is necessary for the effect.
Lifespan. Most species of land snail are annual, others are known to live 2 or 3 years, but some of the larger species may live over 10 years in the wild. For instance, 10-year old individuals of the Roman snail Helix pomatia are probably not uncommon in natural populations.
Slugs have both male and female reproductive cells (hermaphrodite), but must find a mate to exchange sperm before they can reproduce. They lay batches of gelatinous, watery eggs in moist crevices. The climatic conditions determine how quickly the eggs develop and hatch – the warmer it is, the quicker they develop.
Snails are unique in that you can tell how old a snail is by looking at its shell. It maintains the same shell that it was born with and gains more rings in its shell every time it grows. It is similar to a tree in this way, and we can look at the markings on a snail shell to know how old exactly a snail might be.
One of the first signs that your snail is carrying eggs is seeing them dive deep into the substrate of the tank. This is common behavior from all pregnant snails that belong to the family Viviparus. Pregnant live bearers will bury and hide in the substrate to try and keep their clutch of snail eggs safe.
Snails can produce up to six batches of eggs in a single year. During the mating process each snail will lay around 80 eggs about 3-6 days after mating. Each snail digs a 2–4cm hole in the soil with its foot to lay the eggs which will hatch two weeks later (Figure 3).
How Do Snails Give Birth. The snail's reproductive organs are on the bottom of their body and close to the front to improve their abilities to mate. At the end of the mating ritual, both snails will fertilize the eggs in the other, so both of them will deliver eggs. A pregnant snail can carry up to 100 eggs at a time.
In captivity, people have been known to use plasters and even normal sticking tape to hold minor broken shells together allowing the snail to fill and seal the cracks in their shells.
Slugs can be a vector for transmission of parasitic nematodes that cause lungworm in various mammals, so they are usually avoided by hedgehogs and other mammals when other food is available. In a few rare cases, humans have contracted parasite-induced meningitis from eating raw slugs.
Frothy foam around a snail: this is the snail's way of protecting itself from aggression. If hiding in its shell doesn't help, it will secrete a mass of foamy bubbles out to distract and scare predators away.