Miniscule Yet Mighty: Tales of the Snails

Photo provided by Wix

Originally published in the March 2025 Plethodon Log

When the cold February wind hits me in the face at 12mph, I find myself thinking about the snails. They don’t have the luxury of running from the icy wind, dashing from warm building to warm building like I do across campus on my way to work. Instead, they seal their shells with mucus and burrow under the soil to keep warm and moist amidst the cold and dry. Some days I wish I could do that myself. My biology is also not conducive to winter either. Homo sapiens originated in the savannas in Africa, after all, where for millennia our ancestors didn’t even have words for things like “snow” or “ice.” Snails, however, would have been among the first settlers on Maine’s coast some 400 million years ago. 

Sea snails have been in the ocean since the Cambrian explosion, but it wasn’t long after that when fungi gave plants a piggyback ride up to land, leading the snails to follow them out of the water too. They have been here since the dinosaurs came and left, where they currently hide under our garden beds until spring.

If the slowest, the smallest, and the most fragile among us can outlive even those with the sharpest teeth and densest muscles, then that insight sheds some light as to how natural selection defines “the fittest,” among us. Success, therefore, is not just for the biggest or the fastest, it seems.

It’s the snail’s miniscule yet mighty resilience and willingness to survive that inspires me through the toughest of times. Through all kinds of weather, asteroid impacts, disease, famine, wars, oligarchies, revolutions, the snails have trudged along silently beneath our feet, one millimeter at a time, weaving slime trails like tapestries across the Earth.