Great Ramshorn / Posthoernchen / Planorbarius corneus
With a green moss dress / In einem gruenen Kleidchen aus Moos |
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Great Ramshorn / Posthoernchen / Planorbarius corneus
With a green moss dress / In einem gruenen Kleidchen aus Moos |
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4 comments so far...
But I love ramshorns., they look almost like living ammonites, sooo cute....
If you love ramshorns, you'd really like the small aquarium hobby ones --- they come in a wide range of colors and rarely get bigger than a small marble. I have brown, copper, red, blue, leopard, and opal colored ones in my aquariums =) Interestingly, it's the body color of the snail seen through an opaque shell that gives these snails their color -- unlike their larger cousins, like the one pictured, whose shells have color ;) Fascinating critters.
I guess it is because the poor mystery ramshorn did not come from a source they controlled, like the euripean pond turtles. An Emys observed again after release is exiting, a ramshorn is not. Thats beause they did release turtles themselves but no ramshorns. If it should be really wild, that would be of course very exiting, but how to prove that rather than to err on the side of caution? ;o)
BTW the ponds of the Swabian Heimatbund nature centre at Willhelmsdorf are hardly the middle of nowhere, it is basically a hatchery ruin made into a nature exhibit with tiny naturalized bodies of water flowing into each other just outside a smaltown and next to the former peat company turned a sizable wild NSG. Access is all free unless you go inside the buildings to look at the exhibits indoors and use the facilities. Many families go there during holidays, some childens groups with teachers get tours on workdays and otherwise it's a site for birder and hobby enomologists worthwhile to check. Walking dogs and jogging inside the ponds maze just for the soft paths is dicouraged but enforcement lacks somewhat. It's peaty there with some reddish water, but I would guess comperably cleanly. The bog is the source of two rivers, but has no river flow into, so there cant be much pollution upstream as peat farming stopped decades ago.
It was the second ramshorn I spotted in a water body in this area of the Pfrunger Ried within 14 years or so. The first report sat not so well with the person manning the exhibit that day long ago, so this time I did not report it. BTW the first ramshorn I met there was green and fuzzy as well, but so was the poor lone and shortlived ramshorn in the aquarium of the asia takeout too. I have seen clean ones in many colours just as you describe, but usually at zoos and of course at the big garden centers which sell aquaristic stuff.. I thought most water snails simply will aquire a hairdo when population density is low and they might need always a friend or several of the own species to eat their shell free of greens. After all they cant lick the own deriere like a cat..... ;o)