What exactly is a snail's pace?

I will be honest and say I really didn't expect to find accurate information for the question I asked today for my Daily Doodle. I was pleasantly surprised to find there is in fact a Guinness World Record for a racing snail! How hilarious is that?

Up until this year, the World Snail Racing Championship had been held every year since 1970. The race is a circle and the snails start in the middle and race outward for 33 centimeters (or 13"). The nice thing is that snails have a strong homing beacon, so they will likely head towards the outside of the circle, in the direction of their "home". The fastest snail in the races' history is the 1995 champion named Archie, trained by Carl Bramham, who reached the edge of the circle in 2 minutes.

Now if you're talking about an average garden snail rather than a sprinting race garden snail, you're looking at an average of 25 meters per day (82 feet) that's only .0006 miles per hour. That's 10 times slower than our world record holder, Archie. Granted, Archie was only measured for 2 minutes, not 24 hours.

You also should know there are over 60,000 kinds of snails in the world, many of which live underwater, so the "pace of a snail" was a little vague and really depends on the snail, or at the very least, the type of snail. Bottom line, it's slow in comparison to many other animals we know!