Ampullaria Cuprina

Imagine you’re at the lake with your family. Feeling the squishy sand under your toes as you wade through the shallow water on the edge of the beach, when suddenly you step on something hard and you feel it crumble under your foot. You know it couldn't be glass because you didn't feel a sharp pain from being stabbed, and you know it's too soft to be a rock. Being curious, you look down to the edge of the water and see a slug and see a tiny broken sea shell. You figure out what you had stepped on a snail! But it isn't just any ordinary snail, it was a Ampullaria Cuprina, commonly known as the apple snail. Now you wonder what the difference between a normal snail, and a Ampullaria Cuprina exactly is. You think that there couldn't be much of one because they are both snails, but that is definitely not the case.

Ampullaria Cuprina are freshwater snails found in many tropical areas, but can also be found in the ditch in front of your house, or at the lake that you go to every summer with your family. The Ampullaria Cuprina can vary by color and shape. They can be a yellowish color and look more like ram horns, or they can be a brown color with dark bands and have a normal snail shell. They all are small though. Most average out to be 2.5 cm (1 inch) in length. They live in a wide range of habitats, like swamps, ditches, ponds, lakes, and rivers. They can eat vegetables like cucumbers, spinach, carrots, fish food, dead fishes, other snails, and their eggs. A related species to the Ampullaria Cuprina is the Giant Ramshorn Snail.

Humans use them as pets, even though it's not very common. They do you their hard shells as a defence mechanism, even though it really didn't help them much when you stepped on one. They need both male and female for reproduction but, it depends on the temperature. High temperature and the food amount can trigger production to be greater than if the temperature is low and the food amount is scarce.

All in all, the Ampullaria Cuprina is actually a very interesting animal. It’s aka called the Apple Snail, which is pretty cool, they can vary from a yellow color, to a brownish color, can have a shell that looks kind of like a rams horn, can live almost anywhere that has water. They can even eat vegetables! They’re used as pets, and they mate just like humans.