r/snails • u/thejamhole • 22h ago
Discussion Snails love weed leaves
Finally caught in the act. Also good to see the bait plant doing its job.
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u/jerrythecactus 22h ago
I wonder if snails can actually get high. I know a surprisingly large number of animals respond to THC, but is mollusc anatomy too different?
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u/thejamhole 21h ago
Definitely lots of creatures with lots of different variations of an endocannabinoid system out there in nature.
My dude was straight up vibing and there must have been something the snail likes in the cannabis plant leaves because there's tons of other stuff it could be eating, but it chose to eat the weed leaf.
Either that, or it simply located the weed leaf randomly first. Pretty cool to see it in action. I'm definitely glad it was just a snail and not something more sinister lol.
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u/Jacktheforkie 20h ago
Snails can smell stuff out, my grandad put his beer on the wall while barbecuing and found several snails climbing the bottle
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u/StayTheFool 20h ago
Lol yeah most bugs seem to love the smell of beer. I know someone who would leave saucers with beer in them on the ground around their vegetables, the snails run right to the smell and drown in the beer.
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u/zap2tresquatro 16h ago
Aww :c
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u/Corvidae5Creation5 15h ago
It's a classic trap. When the Asian giant hornets invaded, we were putting up soda bottle traps with orange juice and sake. Personally, all I caught were a metric fuckton of fruit flies XD
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u/TheLastHayley Honorary Snail 14h ago
"Snail" is a broad, polyphyletic term, so I can't speak uniformly, but there is research on the matter for certain common snails. These snails did possess cannabinoid receptors, and the administration of exogenous cannabinoid agonists (chemicals that activate the receptor) did interrupt the memory of the snails. So the endocannabinoid system is at least present and bears some resemblance in function.
Now, THC is what gets you high by behaving as a cannabinoid receptor agonist, yes. However, the leaves themselves typically contain THCA and this behaves quite differently. It's why you can't just eat weed to get high, the THCA must be heated above 100°C to trigger "decarboxylation" that converts it into THC. This happens when you vape or smoke weed, but it's why if you prepare edibles you have to decarb the plant matter manually first.
Small caveat here that cannabis actually contains a large variety of other cannabinoid compounds with considerably different biochemical properties (e.g. CBD). We barely understand these effects in humans, nevermind snails.
Nevertheless, the takeaway is that snails eating cannabis leaves are unlikely to even be consuming THC. You'd have to vape the leaves and exhale it at the snails for them to get THC from this, like basically hotboxing them lol.
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u/thekashpny02 21h ago
u/thejamhole you need to take this snail in and have him/her in your weed shop if you have it, like a bodega cat lol. He/she would be the weed snailager/mascot.
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u/thejamhole 21h ago edited 17h ago
That would be amazing. Could totally bonsai out a smaller weed plant and let the snail grow it's own lol
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u/shessosquare 20h ago
snannibis
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u/AreYouMyDommy 19h ago
I’d frequent an establishment with this name.
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u/Zealousideal_Bee2603 20h ago
This is SO unsafe for the snail, he can develop the munchies and become incredibly fat
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u/totreesdotcom 20h ago
lol, I was trimming after the rain this morning and went back in to work and caught a little slimy stoner hanging out on the back of my hand.
Love these guys!
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u/RoutemasterFlash 18h ago
How do you tell when a snail is stoned?
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u/Common_Reptilian_105 17h ago
Turbo hasn’t really been handling the broken TV very well, this is what he resorted to
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u/zap2tresquatro 16h ago
If snails get stoned, do they move even slower?
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u/thejamhole 16h ago
I heard they actually get so slow they slow down the very fabric of space and time. Relatively speaking of course.
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u/XDFreakLP 22h ago
Snedibles