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General Biology

The Florida apple snail is the largest freshwater snail in North America. The apple snail is referred to as an "apple snail" because of its overall large, globose shape (like an apple).

The main characteristic of this family of snails (Ampullaridae) is that to breathe, they have both a gill and an air sac that functions as a lung. Their gill allows them to extract oxygen from the water. If the water does not contain enough oxygen they can use their lung. To use the lung, snails climb near the water surface where they use their siphon to pump in air.