Growth Anomaly? Two eyes on one stem?

[LloydTheSnail]

I don't know if this is normal, rare, or just an occasional occurrence with apple snails... but I have a Golden Apple snail. I noticed that the snails right eye has the stem and then a little dot (which I assume it the eye) at the tip. Well, on its left stem it has two dots that look like two eyes.

I was wondering how this happened, if its common, and if it may worsen the snails already basic visual senses.

[pbgroupie]

I would love to see a picture of that! We've seen forked tentacles after damage and it could be a similar thing. As to how it affects the snail, I would say probably not much. They use motion and their sense of "smell" (chemical receptors) and touch to find food, shelter, and each other. Eyesight isn't one of their priorities as they are color blind and really can only tell dark from light.

[LloydTheSnail]

I'll do my best to get a photo up.

[LloydTheSnail]

Okay here we go. Its the best I could do, camera isn't that great with detail. :/

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[pbgroupie]

My eyes are old, and even with my glasses I am having trouble. I do see what looks to be double spots and it almost looks like the eyeball itself has been shifted, possibly due to injury. They can actually regenerate an eye in about 25 days, but it tends to be smaller than the original. This might be what happened here and the snail now has one functioning and one non-functioning eye.

[LloydTheSnail]

That would make sense, since the second eye is smaller... very interesting.

[Donya]

Back when I had a small Pomacea insularum population, quite a few turned up with interesting numbers of eyes for unknown (although probably developmental) reasons - I think either 8 or 10 total was the maximum I saw for sums of eye counts on both sides. From the pics here it's hard to tell whether that's actually another eye or if it's some other kind of growth. Snails can get benign growths just about anywhere resembling wars as well as other small tumors and cysts from small infections. Some cysts can have a semi-transparent spherical appearance - which would make it pretty hard to distinguish something like that from an actual second eye in this case.

[xXColtzFanXx]

makeing the rounds on a few other snail forums this seems to happen moore often then you would think with giant african land snails. (Achatina achatina) The reasoning seems to be genetics as it happens from birth with full stalk splits, however injury is just as likely. If you ever find out definitavly i would luv an up date or your snai l.