Snail Teeth

What am I looking at?  

In this image, you can see the rows and rows of hooked teeth (1) that line a snail’s tongue.  Notice that the right and left sides of the tongue are mirror images of each other. Depending on their age, and therefore the degree of damage they’ve incurred, the teeth range in shape from rounded (1) to very sharp and pointed (2). This image has been colored to indicate the depth (distance) that each element of the image is from the viewer, with cooler colors like blue and purple being closer to the viewer and warmer colors like yellow and red being farther away.

Click on the right arrow to see the teeth of a few different species of snail.

Biology in the background  

These teeth scrape up food, typically algae in a biofilm and other microorganisms or plant tissues, off whatever surface the snail is traveling across. The shape of a snail’s teeth can be used to identify its diet. Many aquatic snails have pointed, triangular teeth for scraping algae off rock surfaces. Over time, the teeth and the underlying membrane are worn down, and teeth are lost. As this happens, new teeth grow to replace those that have been worn down. In this way, a snail’s mouthparts are continually regenerated.

In snails ranging in volume from the size of an acorn to the size of a walnut, their tongues can be from 1 millimeter to 6 millimeters wide, or from 13 times to 78 times larger than the width of a human hair. And their tongues can be up to 20 millimeters long, or roughly the width of a human thumbnail.

Technique  

This image was created using confocal microscopy.