Giant African Land Snail (Achatina fulica)

About Giant African Land Snail (Achatina fulica)

• Kingdom: Animals
• Phylum: Mullusks
• Class: Gastropod
• Order: Common Land Snails and Slugs
• Family: Giant Land Snails

Benthem-Jutting (1952) deions on Achatina fulica – “Shells large, solid, pyramidal with produced spire and rounded base. Ground colour light yellow or fawn, ornated with irregular brown or mauve vertical bans, streaks or blothes under a greenish-yellow epidermis. With soft lustre, little or not transparent. Coarsely striated in vertical direction. Towards the suture and towards the aperture the striae become almost rib-like. In many specimens there is a finer spiral sculpture also, especially on the whorls of the spire, rendering this part of the shell a decussated appearance. The whole is covered by a yellowish or brownish periostracum which peels off easily. Whorls 7 to 9, rapidly increasing in size, moderately convex. The last one large and rather inflated. Top whorls smooth. Umbilicus close, even in young individuals. Suture irregularly crenulated, occasionally lightly margined. Aperture somewhat oblique, broad-oval, pointed above and below. Height of aperture shorter than the spire. Peristome not continuous, the two ends connected by a thin, white callus against the parietal wall. Outer margin sharp, not thickened or reflected. Interior white or bluish-white. In the interior of young shells the flames of the outside colour pattern are shining through. Columellar margin thickened, slightly tortuous longitudinally and truncated at the lower end.”