#4 Slug

#4 Slug

Common Name: Slug

Description: 

-Color: black/dark brown

-Slugs do not have skeletons to support their bodies. So they have extreme flexibility and can bend over backwards and fit in very tiny spaces. This gives them an advantage to fit into specific niches in their environment. Instead of skeleton they have a liquid skeleton, this means that they use liquid to push themselves.

-Slugs have two pairs of 'feelers' or tentacles on their head. The upper pair is light sensing, and has eye spots at the ends. The lower pair provides sense of smell. Both pairs can be regrown if lost.

-Many Slugs are active after rain because of the moist ground, and in drier conditions they hide in damp places.

-Slugs produce two types of mucus: one is thin and watery, and the other is thick and sticky. Body mucus provides protection against predators, it can make the slug hard to pick up and hold by a birds beak.

-Moves on its mucus covered foot.

-Slugs feed on leaves from living plants, lichens, mushrooms. Some slugs are predators and eat other slugs, snails, and earthworms.

Taxonomy:

-Kingdom: Animalia 

-Phylum: Mollusca

-Class: Gastropoda

-Order: Soleolifera or Stylommatophora

-Family: Veronicellidae

Ecology:

-Slugs eat decaying plant material and fungi. Most carnivorous slugs on occasion also eat dead of their own kind.

-A slugs blood is green.

-Slugs eggs can lay in the soil for years and then hatch when conditions are right.

-Slugs are hermaphrodites (they have both male and female reproductive organs).

-They can live for up to six years.

-A slug is essentially a snail without a shell.

-A slugs slime contains fibers which prevents it from sliding down vertical surfaces.

-Slugs have the capability to reproduce themselves although a mate is preferred.