bogleech:

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bogleech:

WHAT THE FUCK I ONLY JUST WROTE IN AN ARTICLE HOW THE CARNIVOROUS SHELLED SLUG IS ONE OF MY DREAM ANIMALS TO MEET BUT THAT THEY’RE “SELDOM SEEN” AND THEN LAST NIGHT A BABY ONE WAS JUST RIGHT OUTSIDE FOR REAL

HOW

I WENT MY WHOLE LIFE PROBABLY INVESTIGATING EVERY TINY SLUG THAT CROSSED MY PATH TO SEE IF MAYBE IT WAS ONE OF THESE

1,000,000TH TIMES THE CHARM I GUESS

……Anyway this was the best photo out of dozens, it’s smaller than my thumbnail right now but I’ve seen photos of them looking much, much larger. They eat nothing but earthworms, so I put it in a very small glass tank I have with a bunch of baby-size worms, sorry worms : (

It burrowed and disappeared right away and it’s entirely possible I’ll never even see it come out again but hopefully it might grow if kept fed enough??

And maybe this wasn’t an absurd fluke and they’re relatively easy to find around here?

Actually chances are they aren’t really too rare at all they’re just rarely *noticed* because not many people even know what they are and fewer still are routinely scrutinizing small brownish slugs for the presence of vestigial shells.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!!!!!!!!

THEY COME OUT IN THE RAIN ON OUR STREET!

THEY’RE GIANT!

THEY’RE SUCKING UP ALL THE WORMS IN THIS TERRARIUM

I now know for certain these are not rare animals. They’re rarely noticed animals by most people, because most people don’t stop to scrutinize slugs to begin with, let alone in the rain and the dark.

But I wasn’t even trying when I found twenty of them just while running food deliveries Sunday night.

I can already instantly identify these slugs at a glance from even a fair distance. There are common leaves, flower petals and even cigarettes that can look a lot like them but I ALWAYS know.

I was worried about being able to feed the smaller ones but here’s a tiny baby actually eating what was a full grown worm several times its length:

I’m going to set up a much larger tank for these and I wanna decorate and landscape it nicely because all the slugs hide in the light anyway.

I’m really surprised how much enthusiasm there is for this post, even on tumblr I didn’t expect anyone also to find these that interesting…though there’s definitely confusion over why anyone would get this worked up about some slugs.

I guess things like being tiny or slow-moving simply don’t make an animal any less exciting to me than any other, so a carnivorous slug is just as cool to me as a shark or a wolf is to everybody else. Maybe moreso, because these are creatures so totally removed from us. Boneless, nearly blind things hunting their prey in total darkness below the ground, practically aliens living in an entirely different world.

Keeping them in an aquarium feels like having a little piece of that world; or like a tiny dungeon full of weird fantasy monsters.

One thing I’ve still not seen, though, is this:

The big thing on the right here, labeled “ph,” is apparently the pharynx these slugs can “shoot out” to catch an earthworm. The fin-looking end of it labeled “T” is a row of overlapping teeth, like a giant, inflatable chainsaw in the slug’s throat.

I’ve seen them instantaneously snap up a worm at closer range, and it was too fast to make out anything but a blur. For the pharynx to ever be captured on film or photograph would probably require a specialized high speed camera waiting around for exactly the right moment, which is why the only image of the “chainsaw” is this drawing made almost 200 years ago. I can’t even imagine what this must look like and if I ever see it, I’ll have no way to share it. Who knows how long this might remain undocumented outside an antique sketch.

There are just amazing monsters all around you, unnoticed because they’re small and not as “popular” as bigger, flashier things, but they’re all still living weird, intense little struggles and still have their own little mysteries.

You’ll be happy to know I’ve had some of these doing alright in captivity for eight months now, though they don’t do well when there’s more than maybe three or four to a gallon tank.

They even laid some eggs, but none of the eggs hatched, maybe because they’re usually laid far underground under more precise temperature and moisture levels?

I’ve still never seen the jaw contraption!