Gut Extrusion
There have been a few cases of the digestive tract being expelled through the mouth, sometimes entirely. In particular see the following link which is the best documented case of this problem:
http://www.geocities.com/sarkymite/snaildisease.html
The illness detailed here showed symptoms over a period of time, one of the factors behind my making the
Swollen Mouth illness into a section of its own. The two are probably related, favouring the
swollen mouth illness as a sub-set of gut extrusion.
As always, there are a number of possibilities behind this problem:
A digestive or stomach disorder caused by infection or bacterial imbalance
There is evidence (
The Life of Achatinidae in London, Presidential address, R. H. Nisbet, Proc. malac. Soc. Lond. (1974) 41, 171) to suggest that snails eat soil to help digestion. That means they rely on, as many invertebrates do, the natural bacterial flora and fauna in the substrate without which they will stop eating and die. Changes in this microscopic life could have a negative effect on the snail and should not be ruled out as a precursor to this problem.
Parasitic invasion
of some sort, probably by nematodes (see Pests: Other).
Tumours/Growths
(See Internal Tumours).
Further Reading
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