Many times I’ve seen snails appear in the garden, seemingly out of nowhere, during rain. What I don’t understand is where they come from – snails don’t move very fast, so the fact that they’re suddenly there – are they there the whole time, but only come out when it rains? If not, why are they drawn to this garden – surely it’s raining everywhere else as well. What about the rain causes them to appear? And how do they disappear again afterwards? You never see them moving in or out, like you can’t see them turned away and leaving at the end, or disappearing into whatever hole they came from. How do they appear so suddenly when they move so slowly? I just want someone to give me a simple explanation pls
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Snails are good at hiding from the sun when it’s dry. They find cool shady spots – empty plant pots, under rocks or window-sills, in piles of firewood…
Your question has already been answered, so let me add a historical titbit:
Already in ancient times, many philosophers such as Aristotle were baffled by occurrences such as snails, worms and maggots seemingly appearing from nowhere under the right conditions. This led to the common theory that dead matter sometimes spontaneously turns into critters. A very off yet first version of what we now call abiogenesis: life from non-life.
This held on well into the 19th century, even including larger animals such as birds. Anyone interested can read more on the [Wikipedia article on Spontaneous Generation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation).
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Snails/slugs are averse to dry and bright areas, they mostly live underneath buildings or in dense foliage, underneath leaves and plants, around soils, grasses, that type of thing
When it rains or cools down at night causing dew their roaming range just increases a bit, since now the wet or damp ground is a bit more like what they’re used to – although they are more likely to get picked off by birds or other predators if they venture out, the pro of doing so is that they might discover another area of foliage better than the one they left
Imagine you lived somewhere that the ambient temperature was 200°f and it was a desert.
Now imagine it rained and that temp dropped to 85. And now is one of the only times you can eat and get water.
I’m pretty sure you would take that opportunity to go out, regardless of what predators may be there.
Snails want to get their rocks off which is something they do easier in wet weather. Since they like most animals are highly motivated to get their rocks off they don’t hang around when it is wet.
When I was a child my Grandmother told me that snails would start climbing before a rain. I have seen snails climbing for the last 50 years. While this doesn’t prove anything, I believe some animals can sense the coming weather. Possibly due to changes in barometric pressure.
Snails crawl around on a mucous-covered foot and have soft, wet skin that loses water quickly. They dry out pretty easily. Because of this they prefer to be out and about when it’s wet. When it is dry, they can withdraw inside their shells, plug the opening, and basically seal themselves into a nice, watertight little package to wait out the next rainy day.
So when it’s dry, the snails crawl down and hide themselves under rocks and in leaf litter and places like that down on the ground. They are hard to find, but if you dig around enough under things and in sheltered, damp areas, you may come across some. You may think they are dead at first, since they just look like shells with the open end closed up with a plug of gunk. But when it rains, they crawl out and start climbing all over everything. You don’t really see them coming or going because they aren’t traveling far, maybe just a few feet.
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