Although the basic form of the foot is a flat, broadly tapered, muscular organ, which is highly glandularized and usually ciliated, numerous modifications occur in various groups. Frequently there is an anterior-posterior division into a propodium and a metapodium, with the former capable of being reflexed over the shell. In Strombus the foot is greatly narrowed; in limpets and abalones it is broadly expanded and serves as an adhesive disk. In pelagic gastropods, especially the heteropods and pteropods, the foot is a swimming organ. Many prosobranchs and some opisthobranchs have lateral projections of the foot called parapodia; they are used in swimming or else are reflexed over the shell surface. An unusual feature found in several kinds of land slugs, some nudibranchs, and the neogastropod marine family Harpidae is the ability to self-amputate the posterior portion of the foot, which remains wriggling violently to distract a predator while the anterior foot and visceral mass creep slowly away to safety.

The nervous system and sense organs

A series of paired ganglia (knotlike masses of nerve cell bodies that collectively function as the central nervous system) are connected by nerve cords, which are bilaterally arranged in the primitive forms. The process of torsion has twisted the visceral cords into the form of a figure eight. In more-advanced gastropods there are secondary modifications to a more nearly bilateral state, and in many groups there has been detorsion. Water-dwelling mollusks depend primarily upon ciliary water currents passing across chemoreceptors for information from the environment. The primary chemoreceptors in the gastropod body are scattered over the skin surface, protruding from tentacles or palps, and housed inside the mantle cavity in the form of the osphradium, an olfactory organ connected to the respiratory system. Sense organs are more highly developed in carnivores than in herbivores. Eyespots, located at the base (most gastropods) or tip (land pulmonates) of the eye tentacles, are primarily light-sensitive rather than image-forming. A pair of statocysts, thought to be balancing organs, is present in nonsessile taxa.

Digestive system

The radular motion conveys food particles into the mouth, and ciliary currents move the food through the digestive tract, except in carnivores, where muscular action plays an important role. Various salivary and digestive glands secrete enzymes into either or both the buccal cavity and the stomach, where digestion takes place. The apical digestive gland, or “liver,” can store digested food for use during periods of inactivity.

The excretory system

There are two kidneys, or nephridia, in primitive gastropods, such as the archaeogastropods, while, in the advanced forms, one kidney is small or lost. The kidney plays different roles, depending upon the environment in which the snail lives. Most marine gastropods have the same total concentrations of solutes as in the surrounding seawater, and thus a small osmotic differential (i.e., an equilibrium) exists between the water leaving and that entering the cell. Little energy is needed therefore to prevent the cells from losing or gaining too much water. Freshwater gastropods, however, have a higher total solute concentration than that of the surrounding water. The kidney must expend energy to control water balance (osmoregulation). The flow of water through the mantle cavity is restricted in freshwater species by the closure of the mantle cavity by the mantle collar. Land prosobranchs have an open mantle cavity and, in order to conserve water, secrete nearly crystalline urine. Land pulmonates have a ureteric groove or closed ureter that resorbs water from the urine. In both marine and freshwater species, ciliary water currents sweep the excreted matter out of the mantle cavity.

Respiration

In marine and freshwater gastropods, respiration takes place as water currents pass across the gill surfaces within the mantle cavity in most species with spiral shells, across gill elements along the sides of the bodies in most limpets, or through projections from the body surface in sea slugs or other taxa with reduced shells. The upper surface of the mantle cavity is heavily vascularized in land snails, which use muscular contractions to pump air in and out of the small respiratory pore at the anterior edge of the mantle cavity. In some land slugs or tropical snails with reduced shells, respiratory functions have shifted either to external projections from the mantle collar or to the skin as the area of mantle roof available for respiration has decreased in size.

The reproductive system

The primitive archaeogastropods retain two nephridia; the right nephridium provides the passage for eggs or sperm from the ovary or testis to the mantle cavity. The sexes are separate in nearly all prosobranchs, although in a few taxa, such as Crepidula, an animal begins life as a male and then changes to a female later. Opisthobranch and pulmonate species are hermaphroditic and often protandrous (male gonads maturing first); however, in many taxa, adults become simultaneous hermaphrodites (male and female gonads are functional at the same time). Internal fertilization is common in the more advanced marine species but mandatory in the freshwater and terrestrial groups. A very few gastropod species are parthenogenetic (gametes developing without fertilization); the progeny of these species are clones of the parent.

Features of defense

Warning coloration is found in some of the brilliantly coloured shells and bodies of carnivorous marine snails that produce highly toxic poisons. Similar bright colours characterize some land snails and slugs that secrete noxious chemicals and thus will be sampled only once by a predator. Camouflage coloration provides partial protection against predation by some European land snails.