Slugs: Searching for the perfect salad!
Photos by Don Bartling Slugs are most active at night, slug tracks are usually seen more than slugs themselves. The lower tentacles are used for smelling and feeling, while the end of the upper tentacles have eye spots enabling the slug to detect movement.
Photo by Don Bartling The slugs are most active at night, slug tracks are usually seen more than slugs themselves.
During a hot July morning I noticed a grayish slimy track across the concrete driveway. I was surprised at the tracks as it was the driest day of the summer to date. Following the tracks I found what made them, a slug. Slugs are most active at night; their tracks are usually seen more than the slugs themselves. Slugs’ biggest concern is drying out so it tends to seek shelter during the day under debris or in the soil.
Slugs are very damaging garden pests that can be found throughout the county, most likely in moist and humid climates. Your garden is likely to have more slugs during a particularly rainy season.
Slugs are not insects; rather they are soft-bodied mollusks. Most garden slugs are gray to dark brown and about one-inch long. They hide in dark, damp places during the day. Slugs will leave a slimy secretion where they have been, so even if you can’t spot them, you’ll know they are there. Look for slime both on plants and surrounding soil. It is easiest to see the trails of slime first thing in the morning.
Most slugs evolved from snails, losing all or part of their shell over time. The snail has an external shell made of calcium and other minerals. Some slugs retain a remnant shell beneath a soft outer mantle. The theory is that lack of available calcium and a damp environment contributed to the gradual loss of the shell in damp, temperate regions.
When the weather turns hot and dry, a snail can retract into its protective shell to prevent desiccation, while a slug must retreat into the soil or under vegetation to prevent drying out. It is estimated that, during warm summer months, as much as 90 percent of a garden’s slug population lives underground.
Slugs will feed on almost anything in the garden — look for holes and ragged edges on leaves and stems. They crawl along the ground munching anything digestible, from decomposing plants to dead animals. In the garden, they may eat tender young plants searching for the perfect salad. They also eat bits of compost, fungi and all sorts of rotting matter, even paper or cardboard. Slugs play an important role in nature, breaking down decaying matter and recycling it back into the soil. What is amazing: they eat without teeth.
Instead of teeth, slugs possess a rasping tongue-like organ called a radula. The radula consists of thousands of tiny tooth-like protrusions (called denticles) covering a band that is similar to a conveyor belt. As the band moves the denticles rasp away particles of the food and move them back into the slug’s digestive system.
Snails eat the same way. Slugs and snails are almost the same except slugs lack a shell. Both are invertebrates, meaning they lack a backbone, and both are gastropods which is a class of mollusks. Gastropod means “stomach-foot” in Greek.
Aptly so, the slug’s foot is the dominating feature on its body. The muscular foot runs almost the entire length of the slug on the underside with the portion touching the ground called the “sole”.
The lower tentacles are used for smelling and feeling, while the end of the upper tentacles have eye spots enabling the slug to detect movement.
Winter isn’t the only time slugs have to protect themselves from dehydration — long stretches of hot, dry weather can be just as detrimental. Direct sunlight can cause a slug to rapidly lose body moisture. Therefore, when the dry spells of summer come, slugs enter a type of summer dormancy called estivation. Slugs will surround themselves in a mucous cocoon and then wait for the rain to come and dissolve the mucous away.
The slug lives 1-5 years, depending on the species, if they aren’t preyed upon by carnivorous snails, garter snakes, ducks, birds, moles, shrews, toads or the gardener.
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