What animals eat snails?
Ah yes, escargots in a restaurant! OK, here is the long list: Animals that eat snails can be found in almost every systematic group. Snails usually are quite defenceless and so are welcome sources of protein to many animals. Even those that usually do not eat snails will do so in times of meagre food supply. That is also true for man: It seems hard to imagine, that, while today snails are an expensive delicacy for few, during the Thirty Years War farmers ate snails, because they had nothing else to eat. Against larger insects, this mucus defence does not help. Especially carnivorous beetles, such as carabids (Carabidae) and fireflies (Lampyridae) (among the latter especially the larvae) are used to attacking and eating snails. Not only insects eat snails, also many arachnids: Among the harvestmen (Opiliones) there are species (Ischyropsalis hellwigi) that almost exclusively live on snails. There are snail eaters in all vertebrate classes. Among the amphibians mainly larger frogs, but e
“Land snails have many natural predators, including members of all major vertebrate groups, decollate snails, ground beetles, leeches, and even the predatory caterpillar Hyposmocoma molluscivora. The Botia family of freshwater fish also feed on freshwater snails by sucking them out of their shells. In the pulmonate marsh snail, Succinea putris, there is a parasitic flatworm, Leucochloridium paradoxum, which prevents the snail from retracting its enlarged and parasitized eye stalk, which thus makes the snail much more likely to be eaten by a bird, its final host. Humans also pose great dangers to snails in the wild.
