Snail eyes

I can see a bit of a theme developing here! I found this little snail in the garden yesterday, and as it's still grey and cold, and the macro lens was on the camera, I decided to take a few shots this morning.

This is an eye-to-eye view of a grove snail or brown-lipped snail Cepaea nemoralis. We actually introduced these into our garden (you may think we are quite mad!). They come in a range of attractive colours (yellow, pink and brown) and banding patterns (0, 1,3 or 5 bands) and don't really seem to cause much damage to the plants, compared with the voracious garden snail Helix aspersa. They are also enjoyed by the resident song thrushes.

All snails have four tentacles, and on land snails the eyes are on the upper tentacles. By contrast sea snails have their eyes on the lower tentacles. The structure of the eye does not provide detailed vision, they rather function as directional light sensors that give the snail an orientation towards light sources. Colour vision is absent as the retina does not contain colour specific photosensors.

It was just as well that I did take this.... it was to dark for any good bird photographs in the garden, and I didn't even get my camera out when I took the dogs for a walk as everything looked so dull!