Snail

[rppvt]

i noticed one of my bigger snails barely hanging on to the glass the other day and realized i could see right past his/her body into the rills of its inner intestinal area--- like it had stretched past it's usual boundaries or been eaten away from within. i couldn't see any parasite, per se, but i did see what looked like a swimming larval-staged creature swimming around in there-- not a pod so much as perhaps a larval hermit or fish. i know that without a pic, i've got nothing, really to go on, but i thought perhaps someone else might have run into this kind of wasting away thing with their snails...

 

[greenbean36191]

Are you sure you weren't just seeing the gill waving around inside the shell? It sort of looks like a small feather inside the shell, above the head and sometimes it's visible when the snail hangs out especially far.

 

[rppvt]

Nope, after looking through the magnifying glass, I realized that the rills were probably the gill, attached by a long umbilicus looking structure, but this "thing" was indeed a 1 mm. swimming interloper of some sort. It didn't look like it was feeding on the snail, just using the shell as a den. The snail appears weak and unable to contain himself.