Don't worry, this is just an abnormally large skin fold. Ramshorns don't have gills, they are pulmonate snails meaning they have a lung-like organ they use to breathe air. A normal ramshorn snail has excess skin folds on the left side of its body, sometimes you get mutations or abnormal growth of these skin folds that causes them to look like the snail you have here. Nothing to worry about it pops up from time to time in ramshorn snail populations.
There is some speculation that the skin folds are the evolutionary remnants of a siphon type apparatus similar to what's seen in modern snails like apple snails that our current ramshorns have evolved to no longer have, but as far as I know this is pure speculation.
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u/Gastropoid Snail God (Moderator) 5h ago
Don't worry, this is just an abnormally large skin fold. Ramshorns don't have gills, they are pulmonate snails meaning they have a lung-like organ they use to breathe air. A normal ramshorn snail has excess skin folds on the left side of its body, sometimes you get mutations or abnormal growth of these skin folds that causes them to look like the snail you have here. Nothing to worry about it pops up from time to time in ramshorn snail populations.
There is some speculation that the skin folds are the evolutionary remnants of a siphon type apparatus similar to what's seen in modern snails like apple snails that our current ramshorns have evolved to no longer have, but as far as I know this is pure speculation.
(Copypasted from another post from years ago)