Roman Snail

Helix pomatia, commonly called the Roman snail, Burgundy snail or escargot, is a large, air breathing land snail native to Europe, with a globular brown shell that is creamy white to light brown with darker banding, thirty to fifty millimetres wide and thirty to forty five millimetres tall, made up of five to six whorls around a large aperture. It is naturally distributed across central and southern Europe, living in forests and shrubland as well as gardens and other human altered habitats, at elevations up to two thousand one hundred metres in the Alps, and has also been introduced to North America. The species is hermaphroditic, beginning to reproduce in late May and laying clutches of forty to sixty five eggs, and it seals its shell with a chalky epiphragm during hibernation or dry periods. Roman snails were eaten by the ancient Romans and remain especially popular in French cuisine, where cooked specimens are called escargot, though the species is difficult to farm commercially. It is listed as Least Concern by the IUCN and receives legal protection in several European countries.