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Gardeners are being encouraged to bowl snails out of their back yards to stop them munching on their prized plants.

New research suggests that if you remove them some 65-feet away from your garden - around the same length as a cricket pitch - they will not return.

Chemical pellets are often used to combat the pesky mollusks but this new method could be just as effective.

The humble garden snail is one of the most common sights of the British countryside but how much do you actually know about them?

Walk - or slide - this way.

Old heads

A snail's lifespan is dependant on what exact species they are and what habitat they live in.

Some only live for 5 years but can if lucky enough can live to as long as 25.

Best foot forward

While it may not look like it snails slide around on a single foot.

The one long muscle acts just like a human extremity and helps them grip and push themselves along the ground.

Are they poisonous?

(Image: Getty)

Marine species of snail are poisonous but most of the land-based examples are not.

If you are sick after eating them it's almost certainly because they weren't cooked properly.

The sea-based cone snail is one of the most deadly creatures in the world with a single sting even able to cause death.

Life in the fast-ish lane

The slime - which is in fact mucus - helps lubricate the floor and helps them pass along with less friction.

With this being the case snails often travel in the mucus trails of others to move faster.

Maxing relaxing

(Image: PA)

Despite their speedy slime lanes rather unsurprisingly snails are one of the slowest creatures on the planet.

They usually move at a steady pace but can reach a dizzying 50 yards per hour - 1.3cm per second.

You can eat the slime

Yes you read that correctly - you can eat the slimy trail left behind.

A popularly peddled myth is that snail slime makes a food inedible but a simple wash and it should be good to go.

Remarkably some research suggests it can be used to treat stomach ulcers.

Eye eye

(Image: Suren Manvelyan)

Snails are almost completely blind and they don't have any mechanism of hearing sounds either.

With the kind of sensory deprivation their sense of smell is extraordinary.

They can apparently locate food from as far away as a few metres, which for an animal of their minuscule dimensions is quite the distance.

Sky-high dentist bills

You might not think so to look at them but snails actually do have teeth.

In fact the average garden snail has over 14,000 of them - a costly scale and polish for sure.

Dog eat dog

(Image: ITV)

Officials in Florida have called in a bizarre method to cause the growing problem of giant snails - using Labrador retrievers.

As many as 128,000 snails were caught as part of an aggressive extermination campaign but more help was needed which saw canines called in.

"They're very good at detecting the Giant African Land Snail," said Richard Gaskalla, the head of plant industry at the Florida Agriculture Department.

"So we're building four-legged technology into this program as quickly as we can."