Ah yes, escargots in a restaurant! OK, here is the long list: Animals that eat snails can be found in almost every systematic group. Snails usually are quite defenceless and so are welcome sources of protein to many animals. Even those that usually do not eat snails will do so in times of meagre food supply. That is also true for man: It seems hard to imagine, that, while today snails are an expensive delicacy for few, during the Thirty Years’ War farmers ate snails, because they had nothing else to eat. Against larger insects, this mucus defence does not help. Especially carnivorous beetles, such as carabids (Carabidae) and fireflies (Lampyridae) (among the latter especially the larvae) are used to attacking and eating snails. Not only insects eat snails, also many arachnids: Among the harvestmen (Opiliones) there are species (Ischyropsalis hellwigi) that almost exclusively live on snails. There are snail eaters in all vertebrate classes. Among the amphibians mainly larger frogs, but especially toads eat snails, such as the common toad (Bufo bufo). That is why the latter should be a very welcome guest in every garden: It does not even hesitate to eat the large slugs, whose slime makes them inedible to other animals. Also the fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra) and its black relative, the alpine salamander (Salamandra atra) eat small slugs and snails. The fire salamander even lurks for its prey on mushrooms these visit to eat. Among reptiles, mainly small non venomous species also eat snails, for example the European blindworm (Anguis fragilis) and the Australian snail skink (Tiliqua gerrardii), a small lizard. Among snakes there are for example certain canopy snakes from Costa Rica (the snake displayed is Dipsas bicolor). Songbirds usually also eat snails, if their size allows them to do so. The song thrush (Turdus merula) has solved the problem how to crush a snail’s shell by throwing them on a suitable hard stone. Usually it uses the same stone ever and ever again, which is why there many broken snail shells can be found. Such a stone is then called a thrush anvil. On the other hand, snails have adapted to this by a most uncommon form of camouflage – depending on vegetation cover and ground colour, banded snails can be yellow or red, banded or unbanded, always those camouflaged best are selected to survive. Next to song birds, also fowl and ducks (for example the so-called runner ducks) eat snails. Stork, heron and other birds also will not leave a tasty snail aside. Among mammals, especially insectivores also will eat snails, but also some carnivores will fatten their menu with a snail. Especially fond of snails and also slugs are hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus), moles (Talpa europaea) and shrews. The hedgehog has a special method to rid slugs of their sticky slime: It rolls them in earth and then cleans them with its paws. Of course, one enemy of snails remains to be named at last: Man

The French ! just kidding,i couldn't resist!

birds, insectivores and some reptiles.

Humans eat snails, right?

ducks love snails.

Ducks yes. The indonesians use them to keep the rice fields pest free, as they eat snails, grasshoppers, locusts etc.

Liver Fluke or Hepatica something, anyway they;re more like a parasite

yes my fanny eats snails and poos them but out

Hedgehogs and birds:)

"Land snails have many natural predators, including members of all major vertebrate groups, decollate snails, ground beetles, leeches, and even the predatory caterpillar Hyposmocoma molluscivora. The Botia family of freshwater fish also feed on freshwater snails by sucking them out of their shells. In the pulmonate marsh snail, Succinea putris, there is a parasitic flatworm, Leucochloridium paradoxum, which prevents the snail from retracting its enlarged and parasitized eye stalk, which thus makes the snail much more likely to be eaten by a bird, its final host. Humans also pose great dangers to snails in the wild. Pollution and the destruction of habitats has caused the extinction of a number of snail species in recent years." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snail#Predators Further information: - "[snails] major natural predators": http://www.haywardm.supanet.com/predators.html - "snail predators": http://fins.actwin.com/aquatic-plants/month.9911/msg00348.html - "New silk-producing snail predators": http://milkriver.blogspot.com/2005/07/env-new-silk-producing-snail-predators.html - "predatory snail": http://whyfiles.org/shorties/151land_snail/index.html - "A variety of predators eat land snails and slugs": http://www.carnegiemnh.org/mollusks/palandsnails/ecology_predators.htm - "Predators and the techniques used by apple snails to avoid them": http://www.applesnail.net/content/ecology.php#predators