Slugs and snails use a ‘ventral foot’ – a long, slime-covered muscle on the underside of their bodies – to move at speeds of around one metre per hour (three feet per hour).
The foot, or muscle, ripples to send the animal sliding over its own slime. This system is inherently quite slow and is limited by their rate of slime production.
However, being slow is not necessarily a problem for slugs and snails, because they rely on stationary food sources (plants and dead stuff) and on other strategies besides running away to escape predators – their muted colours keep them camouflaged and snails can simply shrink into their shells to protect themselves.
This article is an answer to the question (asked by Lewis Casey, Portsmouth) 'Why do snails move so slowly? Is there an evolutionary advantage to their lack of pace?'
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