Here's a little snippet from National Geographic about how snails reproduce. Long story short, they actually shoot
love arrows at each other.
Quote:
The hermaphroditic snails have both male and female characteristics, but do not self-fertilize. Courtship, which could take anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours, consists of circling one another to get in the best position to shoot a love dart but not be shot.
"Love is coming down to war in a way," said Ronald Chase, a biologist at McGill University in Montreal. "Sexual conflict plays out, even though both members of the mating pair are hermaphrodites."
Once the love darts are fired—and about one-third of the time they miss—the snails transfer sperm to one another in a separate process that lasts as long as six hours. What's the point of the love dart if hitting or missing makes no difference to whether the pair copulates?
The mucus covering the dart causes part of the recipient's female reproductive tract to contract, resulting in a significant increase in the amount of sperm stored. Successful dart shooters father more babies than do snails that miss with their darts.
"Successful dart shooting seems to only benefit the dart shooter, not the recipient," Chase said. "It causes damage"—although Chase has seen snails shot through the brain and still live—"it hurts, and it increases the number of babies the shooter is going to get."
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