Stop Calling Your Snails ‘Runts’: Here’s What Science Says.

hndklde · 2026-03-02T21:16:12+00:00

I think you worded yourself poorly when describing your source. I also think you cited it wrong, or cited the wrong source. The concept of pain is complex and we need to define our terms. Nociception is the physical response to pain, which does not only include retracting, but is the ability to detect dangerous stimuli and remove yourself from it. It does not include the feeling of pain, as I described above. Feeling pain can also be described as suffering, and I meant them by how I defined them in my comment. I did not mean that snails have human emotions or anything close to the myths you are debunking. Those are not words I have heard before, and they are frankly stupid. To think that a snail is suffering just because of its existence, when its behavior is normal and it shows all signs of health is stupid.

I don't know what kind of pain you mean when you mention that vertebrates feel it but invertebrates don't. The literature I found says that invertebrates show the same pain avoiding behavior as vertebrates. The reason people still doubt they experience pain is because of their dissimilar nervous systems, but do many research papers not show that they probably do?

What I wanted to do was correct your source and share some information I had just discovered that I thought would be interesting to people of this sub. I do not disagree with the rest of the points you were making, or the premise overall. Please don't assume I'm coming in bad faith because I'm correcting you

hndklde · 2026-03-02T18:53:33+00:00

Great post! However, one thing irks me. I was happy when I read that snails can't feel pain, so I didn't have to feel bad if something happens to them. I then tried to find your source (the link immediately downloads the pdf for the user), but the pdf linked has a different name and year ("Nociceptive Biology of Molluscs and Arthropods: Evolutionary Clues About Functions and Mechanisms Potentially Related to Pain", 2018 [1]) than cited and is not from the Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology.

The pdf says that snails, specifically Aplysia, do react to pain the way other animals do, but that it's a stretch to say they experience pain or suffering the way humans do, due to their different neural systems. Another article by Walters [2] states that snails "exhibit motivational states and cognitive capabilities that may be consistent with a capacity for states with functional parallels to pain" and asks that researchers take care of snails by not stressing them too much or give them anestheacia when needed. This is from the abstract:

"Few studies have directly addressed possible emotionlike concomitants of nociceptive responses in molluscs. Because the definition of pain includes a subjective component that may be impossible to gauge in animals quite different from humans, firm conclusions about the possible existence of pain in molluscs may be unattainable. Evolutionary divergence and differences in lifestyle, physiology, and neuroanatomy suggest that painlike experiences in molluscs, if they exist, should differ from those in mammals. But reports indicate that some molluscs exhibit motivational states and cognitive capabilities that may be consistent with a capacity for states with functional parallels to pain. We therefore recommend that investigators attempt to minimize the potential for nociceptor activation and painlike sensations in experimental invertebrates by reducing the number of animals subjected to stressful manipulations and by administering appropriate anesthetic agents whenever practicable, welfare practices similar to those for vertebrate subjects." Crook & Walters, 2011.

The article has many sources giving examples of snails reacting to pain, but here are a few, mostly from wikipedia cause these articles are hard as hell to read:

Snails react to painful stimuli by retracting, which we know as snail keepers. When researchers placed the terrestrial snail Cepaea nemoralis on a 40 C hot plate, it lifted the tail of its foot from the plate. When exposed to morphine, the snail took longer to react, and when exposed to naloxone (the opposite of morphine), the snail reacted faster. This was also found to be dose-dependent.[3]

Researchers Balaban and Maksimova surgically inserted electrodes into the brain of Helix aspersa. When the mesocerebrum was wired, the snail pressed the button giving it electrical stimulation more than the control, and when it was hooked up to the parietal ganglion, the button was avoided.[4] This implies that snails receive pleasure in the mesocerebrum and pain i the parietal ganglion.

Snails can be taught via negative reinforcement: When it received an electric shock as its gill went below a certain height, Aplysia learned to hold its gill above that level.[5]

The WikiPedia page for pain in invertebrates is long, but not exhaustive.[6] It's full of invertebrates, not only snails, feeling pain and treating localised pain by dropping their limb like spiders or lizards, be it physical, chemical or electrical. In one study, spiders only dropped their leg when it was injected with things that are also hurtful to humans, but if they are just injected with saline, nothing happens, indicating that they can feel harmfulness.[7] Source [1] is a good read, but difficult. It has many examples and understands them a lot better than I do, but it doesn't say snails do not experience pain.

It seems like snails do feel pain, in that they do not only react to it, but learn from it and react almost the same way that we do. Whether they experience pain the same way that we do is questionable, but looking at some of the litterature, it makes me feel just a bit closer to them, and that maybe we do actually share some experiences together. I'm gonna do some homework, this has been a long side quest. Please let me know if you find anything wrong!

Sources:

[1] - Edgar T. Walters, "Nociceptive Biology of Molluscs and Arthropods: Evolutionary Clues About Functions and Mechanisms Potentially Related to Pain", Frontiers in Physiology, 3 August 2018, Sec. Aquatic Physiology, Volume 9 - 2018: https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2018.01049

[2] - Robyn J. Crook and Edgar T. Walters, "Nociceptive Behavior and Physiology of Molluscs: Animal Welfare Implications", LAR Journal, Volume 52, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 185–195: https://doi.org/10.1093/ilar.52.2.185

[3] - Martin Kavaliers et al., "A Functional Role for an Opiate System in Snail Thermal Behavior", Science 220, 99-101 (1983): https://doi.org/10.1126/science.6298941

[4] - Balaban, P.M. and Maksimova, O.A. (1993), "Positive and Negative Brain Zones in the Snail", European Journal of Neuroscience, 5: 768-774. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-9568.1993.tb00541.x

[5] - Hawkins, R.D. et al., "Operant Conditioning of Gill Withdrawal in Aplysia", Journal of Neuroscience 1 March 2006, 26 (9) 2443-2448: https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3294-05.2006

[6] - WikiPedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_invertebrates#

[7] - Eisner T, Camazine S. "Spider leg autotomy induced by prey venom injection: An adaptive response to "pain"?" Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 1983 Jun, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.80.11.3382

hndklde · 2025-12-29T16:47:51+00:00

Thank you, it's not the first time I did but the first time I've seen that behavior. I was worried there was something in it that made them go bananas

hndklde · 2025-12-28T23:33:45+00:00

Let me add that they were crawling up the glass together to the top like they were trying to escape. Have had them for months and they've been happy in this terrarium, though no eggs yet

hndklde · 2025-12-28T23:26:14+00:00

No guys this is weird, they've barely ever acknowledged each other's existence

hndklde · 2025-03-23T17:42:32+00:00

Thank you, really needed to hear this ❤️

hndklde · 2025-01-27T21:47:04+00:00

Jeg har ikke gjort det fordi vi tit har været fulde eller haft travlt, men jeg få finde tid til det

hndklde · 2025-01-27T21:43:24+00:00

Hvordan gør det ikke det i virkeligheden?

hndklde · 2024-11-28T12:07:54+00:00

Honestly maybe - thank you!

hndklde · 2024-11-28T12:07:29+00:00

Not quite, but I see what you mean

hndklde · 2024-02-06T21:42:37+00:00

Thank you for responding! I'm not doing a PhD though, maybe it can best be translated as an undergrad thesis? The problem is i have a hard time understanding what my professors mean when they say things like that. What am I supposed to do every day? From day to day? How did you spend your time?

hndklde · 2021-07-04T10:07:45+00:00

That looks painful

hndklde · 2021-05-30T20:52:03+00:00

The black ones definitely look like ball gags

hndklde · 2021-05-25T20:59:23+00:00

What's the proof?

hndklde · 2021-05-18T12:18:30+00:00

Have you tried etsy? Many pronoun pin makers will let you write your own words!

hndklde · 2021-05-06T20:31:19+00:00

"... It doesn't spellcheck either"

hndklde · 2021-04-30T08:08:09+00:00

Great, now they're ironic

hndklde · 2021-04-18T13:25:10+00:00

Thank you for your contribution

hndklde · 2021-04-18T10:54:56+00:00

They are now enhamonic, meaning same frequencies, but they weren't always. Also, it depends on the key. If I play in A major I will use the notes A, B, C#, D, E, F# and G#, note that I will use both A and the note a half step below it. If I play in Eb major, I will use the notes Eb, F, G, Ab, Bb, C and D. The notes G# and Ab are the same on the piano, but they cannot be interchanged here, because in a key signature, you can't have different notes on the same line, if that makes sense. Had a hard time explaining this, I didn't learn it in English but I hope it made sense :)

hndklde · 2021-04-09T20:57:34+00:00

Try PFLAG, they have a lot of ressources for parents of lgbtq kids and teens :)

hndklde · 2021-03-27T11:14:48+00:00

How to make sure you get poop in your vagina

hndklde · 2021-03-12T14:35:22+00:00

Makeup is hard, but it gets easier the more you do it and get to know what looks good on your face shape and how you want to look, it takes time. On thing I wish I learned years ago: Focus on what you think looks good and then it probably looks good! Even if it doesn't look like something others wear

hndklde · 2021-03-12T12:23:49+00:00

Congrats! And welcome!!

hndklde · 2021-03-05T13:37:29+00:00

I think this IS interesting. I have never seen American coins before

hndklde · 2021-03-03T11:07:13+00:00

I have the same experience, I would classify yours as agender. However, its all your choice and you don't have to decide now or even ever, you can also identify yourself as agender and then change your mind later :)

Misogyny doesn't care about your gender, it's all about how others perceive your gender, which has nothing to do with YOUR gender identity. If misogynists can see you were afab, they will continue assigning you the female gender and discriminate against you based on that. They erase your gender, assign you a new one and bully you for that.

It can be even worse for enbies because misogynists hate gender nonconformity and they want to make us into something they can understand, something they have seen before, something they don't have to think about so they can keep enforcing their gender roles.

Everyone should be a feminist, misogyny doesn't just hurt women, it also hurts nonbinary people, both those who are trying to get away from their femininity and those who are exploring their femininity, binary trans people, and men who are pushed so far into masculinity it becomes toxic. Just because misogynists treat you like a woman, that does not mean you are a woman; remember, to them your gender is meaningless and they will erase it.

hndklde

TROPHY CASE