Prod a snail embryo with fine glass rods and you can make its shell coil in the opposite direction to normal. This gives an insight into how and when bodily symmetry is controlled through a mixture of ...

If you look at a snail's shell, the chances are it will coil to the right. But, occasionally, you might find an unlucky one that twists in the opposite direction - as fans of Jeremy the lefty snail ...

"I am going to withdraw from the world," says a snail in Hans Christian Andersen's tale The Snail and the Rosebush. "Nothing that happens there is any concern of mine." In the fall, snails get cold.