Rasping the rasp

I was amused to see this snail tucking into a raspberry. 
Raspberries are my favourite fruit so why shouldn't snails enjoy them too? The soft fruit season is over in the garden apart from a few soggy remnants.

Then I thought about how the snail's tongue (radula) was rasping the raspberry. The derivation of the fruit's English name is obscure, but one suggestion is that it shares the same etymology  as the verb 'rasp', both connected with roughness.

Snails, it seems, 
'have got a specialized food processing organ, common to all molluscs: a rasping tongue or radula. A snail's rasping tongue basically resembles a miniature bucket-wheel excavator: an elastic band is moved over a gristle core. Toothlets on the band move through the food and doing so, they rasp particles away and move them to the rear, into the snail's gullet.'
(More on this here.)


Rasp on, Mrs Snail but keep away from my cabbages. (Some hope!)

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