THE FLESH-EATING LAND SNAILS - FAMILY TESTACELLIDAE Carnivorus land mollusks are little known. They are a limited group, called Class Agnatha, the jawless mollusks.
Genus TESTACELLA, Cuv.
Shell ear-shaped, terminal, minute; animal long, slug-like, rapacious, living underground, feeding on earth worms and other mollusks.
The Ear Shell Testacella (T. haliotidea, Drap.) has the predatory habits of a tiger and a shark, showing no mercy to its prey, and ceasing only at the failing of a great appetite. Its worm-like body slides into the burrows of its victims, which it captures by a final spring. The seizing organ is the radula, set with sharp backward-turning teeth. There is nothing to save the earth-worm from this grip; its struggles fasten their hold tighter as the muscles draw it into the capacious maw. In fact, the whole pharynx turns wrong side out to thrust out the armed tongue-ribbon, and with its withdrawal the worm is swallowed whole. The stomach is stretched very considerably to contain a big worm.
In wet weather the Testacella has to come out, for it cannot endure drenched earth. In very dry weather it goes deep, even two or three feet, to find moisture, or seals its body in a waxy coat of mucus to check evaporation. It walks abroad at night, but hides by day. When captured it shows a resentful temper, frothing at the mouth, and spitting out the contents of its stomach. It devours earthworms hungrily, but only if they are alive and squirming. Its eggs are large, one-sixth of an inch in diameter. They bounce like rubber balls when dropped.
Astute gardeners bring Testacella into their greenhouses 251 The Flesh-eating Land Snails to rid them of earthworms. The average person would mistake it for a slug, and thus destroy an ally, instead of an enemy.
Genus OLEACINA, Bolt. SECTION GLANDINA Shell large, long, with narrow aperture and elevated spire, able to contain the long, narrow body; mouth flanked by two long lip feelers, besides the two pairs of tentacles; radula as in Testacella. A group of predatory mollusks whose distribution centres in tropical America.
The greatest of land snails, the Bulimus of South America, six inches long, with eggs as big as olives, is the helpless victim of a Glandina. Calculatingly the cannibal explores the aperture to make certain the shrinking creature is within. Assured of this, it makes short work of dragging it forth. Occasionally, as if to keep its teeth sharp, the Glandina wilt bore a shell through as a Natica would do, and suck the soft parts.
The largest specimens are four inches long, but the species averages one to two inches. The collector looks for them in the centres of tussocks of marsh grass close to the sea coast. The Cuban Oleacina excretes a bitter fluid with which it benumbs its victim before devouring it.
fErope, the greatest of all carnivorous land-shells, lives in South Africa. It is a dull, olive brown snail, about four inches long. It is said that after a battle between native tribes great numbers of /Erope caffra, Fero, come together from all directions, the goal being the field of slaughter.