Description
The shell background color is a creamy white. Different individuals may have shells with varying degrees of pale to dark brown markings. The markings, when present, may be in the form of uninterrupted spiral bands, spiral dotted lines, or small radial smudges.
The shell can be found in various colour variants, but is basically yellow or white with dark color bands or spots and often a dark bluish grey apex. The shells of juveniles are sharply keeled, however the keel is not present on the final adult whorl. The aperture often has a lip that is light reddish on the inside, and the lip margin is only reflected at columellar side. The umbilicus is narrow and half covered by the reflected columellar margin. The apex has a characteristic size in the eastern Mediterranean when compared with other species, where there are no other Theba species. The umbilicus is also rarely seen in other species. Juveniles of Eobania vermiculata have a considerably larger apex.
The width of the shell is 12–25 mm, but in Greece the adult shells are usually below 15 mm in width. The height of the shell is 9–20 mm. The visible soft parts are very light yellowish with dark colour bands running from the sides to the upper tentacles; the tentacles are very long.
This snail is sometimes confused with Cernuella virgata, a species with a much smaller and less inflated shell.
Read more about this topic: Theba Pisana
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible of civilisation. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that their reformation must be worked, and that Missionaries of that description from [France] would avail more than those who should endeavor to tame them by precepts of religion or philosophy.”
—Thomas Jefferson (17431826)
“Once a child has demonstrated his capacity for independent functioning in any area, his lapses into dependent behavior, even though temporary, make the mother feel that she is being taken advantage of....What only yesterday was a description of the childs stage in life has become an indictment, a judgment.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)