It's summer in the UK, which means it's been raining loads and it's the perfect time for me to tell you almost everything you need to know about the garden snail. You might think that a snail is just a snail and that they are all the same, but in fact there are more than 100 species of land snail just in the UK. Garden snails are one of the most common and are probably the species that you are familiar with. They have round light brown shells with darker brown stripes and patches which measure up to 4 centimetres across. The shells grow as the snails grow and they can even regrow if they are damaged. Their bodies are a light model grey and can extend to more than 10 centimetres in length. On their heads, garden snails have four tentacles. The top two are where their simple eyes are located whilst the bottom two are used for smelling their environment. Garden snails have very poor eyesight, they cannot see in colour and it's thought that their eyes are barely able to notice the difference between night and day. They move using a muscle underneath their bodies which is known as a foot. This contracts in waves, propelling them along and leaving a trail of slime behind. They are notoriously slow with an average speed of somewhere around 0.03mph, although in a snail race in 1995 a snail did manage nearly double that speed. Garden snails are mainly active at night or after it has rained. They feed on leaves, shoots and fruits and other organic matter, but they would also eat dead animals if they come across them, including the bodies of other snails. In their mouths they have around 14,000 teeth that are ranged in rows along their tongues. These are used for rasping away at whatever they are trying to consume. They don't have to eat every day and in fact they can go many weeks or sometimes months without feeling if there is no food available or if it's too cold for them to be active. Garden snails are hermaphrodites and that they have both male and female reproductive organs. They become sexually mature around two years of age and will try to make with other snails if they come across them. Here you can see the snail on the left's reproductive organ retracting and after mating both snails will be fertilised. However they don't always need to mate to produce eggs. They can fertilise themselves. Each snail will lay up to 80 white eggs, usually buried in soil or in a damp place. These eggs take two weeks to hatch, after which the young snails emerge as miniature albeit more delicate versions of their parents. Each snail can reproduce up to six times in a single year. The garden snails native range covers the UK, Western and Central Europe but they have also been introduced to other countries including the United States. They are mostly active during a spring, summer and autumn. When during the colder months they retract into their shells and then seal themselves in with a hard layer of dried up mucus which is known as an epifram. There is no date on how many garden snails are in the world or whether their numbers are decreasing, increasing or stable. In the wild they live on average for two to three years but there are reports of them living from much longer in captivity, from five up to 15 years of age. And there we go. This fact file was a bit different to those that I've done recently, so let me know if you'd like to see more about inverter breaks in the comments down below. If you enjoyed this video check out this one on the screen right now. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.