Is it true that snails have four noses? Follow the fact-finding journey with today’s special guest Dr. Jochen Gerber, a malacologist with The Field Museum of Natural History.
Is it true that snails have four noses? Follow the fact-finding journey with today’s special guest Dr. Jochen Gerber, a malacologist with The Field Museum of Natural History.
Plan your visit to the Field Museum or take a virtual tour by visiting www.fieldmuseum.org.
Do you have a fact you’d like us to investigate? Write to us at listen@akidspodcastabout.com. And check out other podcasts made for kids just like you by visiting akidsbookabout.com.
Is That True?
S1 EP02, On The Nose
[INTRODUCTION]
Arionne: Hi, I’m Arionne. I’m a journalist and a college professor. And I’m your host for Is That True? A Kids Podcast About Facts.
Each week, we’ll go on a fact-checking investigation. And we’ll do this with experts whose job it is to know these things. AND enthusiasts, who are people who just really love the topics we’ll be learning about.
As a journalist, I ask questions every day. Questions like: “Why is something the way it is?” Or “What happened in history?” Or “What can we look into to know more?”
And it’s so amazing to me that, now, I get to do all of that with YOU. We’re going to ask these questions TOGETHER.
And, along the way, we’ll learn how to check to see if we know what we think we know. Uncovering the truth is LOTS of fun for me. And if you’re a fact-finder, truth-seeker kind-of-kid, too, you’ve definitely come to the right place!
This season on Is That True? we’ll investigate bones and explore red rivers. We’ll farm on Mars and dig deep into how some of the tiniest things on earth work. And, we’ll learn a thing or two about how to sniff out the truth along the way!
[LISTENER QUESTION AND BREAKDOWN]
Arionne: Speaking of sniffing! Our fact we’ll be investigating is a really cool one. And honestly, it’s about something I don’t really know anything about: SNAILS and how they smell.
Leo: Hi. My name is Leo and I am 8 years old and I live in Pasadena, California.
A fact that I learned is that, this is kinda funny, snails have 4 noses. And I learned that from my class.
Arionne: Wow, Leo. That’s such a cool fact. And I have no idea if that’s true! So, we’ll have to investigate it.
But first, let’s talk a little bit about what a snail is and how I found someone to help us figure things out.
You might have seen a snail in your yard or while you were on a walk outside. Those are land snails. But there are also snails that live in freshwater like lakes and rivers plus sea snails that live in oceans. They are generally small and have shells that they can completely hide inside.
To learn more about snails, I wanted to visit a museum that studies them. I live in Chicago, Illinois, and we have a really cool museum called the Field Museum. I always loved visiting it when I was a kid because they do a lot of research on how we can better support the things we see in nature — things like snails!
I went to their website to learn more. I found that there was a guide that explained the types of snails I could find here where I lived. But I still wasn’t sure about how many noses these snails had.
So my next step was an easy one: I emailed them to ask! That’s how I met a scientist who could help us find out more.
And it turns out, the answer is not a simple yes or no. We’re going to test out this fact by asking questions with someone who has devoted his whole career to studying snails and other animals.
After the break I’ll take you to the Field Museum in Chicago to speak with Dr. Jochen Gerber, a malacologist. Now, what do you think a malacologist studies? Be right back!
[INVESTIGATION]
Arionne: Welcome back to Is That True?, the podcast that explores how we know the things we know.
At the start of this episode, Leo told us that snails have four noses. What do you think? Is that true? It’s time to investigate our fact from Leo. And to look into that, I searched for someone who knows a whole lot about snails. A malacologist!
Dr. Gerber: Hi, my name is Jochen Gerber. I'm a malacologist, and malacologist is, uh, scientists who researches, uh, animals like, uh, snails, clams, squid, and they are relatives. And I work at the Field Museum, uh, where I oversee the collection that we have of these animals.
So I'm a collections manager there.
Arionne: Just like our friend Leo, Dr. Gerber has been interested in snails for a LONG time.
Dr. Gerber: Yeah. I had, uh, an early start as a musicologist. I was a young teenager when I started this whole thing. So, um, um, yeah, really my early years, a little bit. Right.
Arionne: So you always knew that this was what you wanted to know more about pretty much.
Dr. Gerber: Yeah. I mean, when you are 13, 12 or 13 years old, you know what becomes a few later in your life? No, you don't. But, um, it's so happened that, you know, I kinda was able to pull through, you know, and make a career out of it. That's good. I like it. It's super interesting.
Arionne: If there’s anyone who would know about our fact, it would be Dr. Gerber. So I asked him: is it true that snails have four noses? I know that this is actually a much more complicated answer than just a yes or no. So I'm excited to chat with you about it.
Dr. Gerber: Okay. So to make it complicated, It all depends on how you define snail and how do you find nose?
If you define nose as the organ that we have, that we call nose, that one here, um, then snails have no noses at all because our nose has different functions. We breathe through the nose, but we also smell with the nose. Snails don’t breathe through noses. So if they have noses, they are different from our noses.
Arionne: Dr. Gerber explained that there are different kinds of snails and they all smell in different kinds of ways. So to answer if snails have four noses, we’re going to talk specifically about the typical land snail.
Dr. Gerber: If I answered the question in that way, then I have to say, yes, these snails have four noses. Each one of these four tentacles has a sense of smell. Now they are two pairs, the lower ones and the upper ones, the lower ones obviously are closer to the ground and they are apt to smell things nearby by, on the ground, just before the snail, by the upper tentacles are usually straight out into the air.
And so they can perceive smells that come from a bit further away. And smelling is important for the snails because other senses that work at a distance for us, for example, like sight or hearing, does not work well or not work at all for snails. Snails have no sense of hearing. And their sense of sight is very limited.
Arionne: And that very limited sight comes from two of the SAME tentacles that they use for smell.
Dr. Gerber: So in our example, with the land snail with four tentacles, The upper two tentacles. In addition to the, uh, smell sensors also have two eyes. I mean, each tentacle obviously has one eye. Um, so those tentacles, uh, the upper ones are not only noses, but they're also eyes or they have the eyes at the tip of them.
Arionne: So if we're talking about a land snail, then we have four tentacles that some people might say are noses, even though they're different than human noses, two are above, two are lower down. And the reason why is because the ones that are higher up can smell different things compared to the ones that are lower. And also the ones that are higher you can also see out of.
Arionne: To summarize, would you say that their sense of smell is their strongest sense?
Dr. Gerber: That is probably, you could say that. I mean, how much do we really know about the world of a snail as it perceives it? Not that much. We have really a hard time to understand these animals. So, um, but from what we know, you can say probably that the sense of smell is the most important and strongest developed, uh, sense in the snail.
Arionne: Yeah, I guess that's true. They can't tell us so.
[SUMMARY]
Arionne: So is it true that snails have four noses?
Sort of!
Some snails—like the kind of land snail we might see in our backyards or on the sidewalk—have four tentacles that they use to smell. Two that are close to the ground to smell things close and two that point toward the air to smell things up high. So although we clearly can’t ask the snails, we can assume that this is a SUPER important thing for them. One thing I DO know is that this is a really cool fact that now I know, too. So thank you so much, Leo, for helping us learn this fact.
[CLOSING]
Arionne: Thanks to Dr. Jochen Gerber who was our expert on today’s show and the great folks at the Field Museum in Chicago. Plan your visit to the Field Museum or take a virtual tour by visiting www.fieldmuseum.org.
Is That True? is written by me, Arionne Nettles. Our show is edited and produced by Matthew Winner with help from Chad Michael Snavely and the team at Sound On Studios. Our executive producer is Jelani Memory. And this show was brought to you by A Kids Podcast About.
Do you have a fact you’d like us to investigate? Write to us at listen@akidspodcastabout.com. And check out other podcasts made for kids just like you by visiting akidsbookabout.com.