Vocabulary Words
- Snail – Gastropod.
- Substrate – Underlying layer of material.
- Colonial – an association of animals that live together.
- Native Range – area where a plant or animal naturally occurs.
- Plankton – small and microscopic organisms floating in the sea.
Fun Facts
- Unlike other snails, slipper snails cannot move. They attach to something (usually a rock or another slipper snail) and spend their entire life there.
- Start out as plankton and are not boys or girls until they attach to something.
- Once they attach to something they become a boy.
- Once another slipper shell attaches to them, that slipper shell becomes a boy and they become a girl. This continues so that in their colony there are always boys and girls so they can reproduce.
- Slipper shells eat plankton, so may end up eating slipper shell babies (larvae).