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I hadn't seen my original Shy-Hulud in awhile, and it seems they were busy. There were 10 or so baby leatherleaf slugs schlorping about. 🥹 I had to split them up between enclosures, and I'll release most back to the yard after they grow a bit.
This child was being a silly orb 🤍
Shy-Halud feeling bold enough to bring a 2nd eye to bear on the situation 👀
Yellow leatherleaf slug, Vaginulus taunaisii, Veronicellidae
Photographed in Brazil by rogerriodias
Vaginulus! the skinny glubby
What is your Hogwarts house?
stares at you unblinkingly, before continuing to noisily munch on cucumber as if no words were ever uttered to break the gentle trills of crickets in the grass
My cup containing the two leatherleaf slugs I found back in June is suddenly filled with baby glublings!
Here is a quick illustration of the mother (?) leatherleaf surveying a smattering of tiny beans.
sad news today. Beeftongue, slug beloved, is no more. it lived just over a year, a good long time for a Florida leatherleaf, and tasted dozens of lettuces and other delicious vegetation beyond any slug’s dreams. found under a fallen stop sign in Miami, I was honored to share some time with this awesome beast.
farewell, Beef.
Beeftongue is survived by Bupkis, who continues to stubbornly exist despite being over 2, and all of its brood
I picked the first fresh lettuce and kale for the slugs today! Beef was munching some down while this bupkid regarded me balefully
i love beeftongue so so much it’s insane
strange little creature <3
switcheroo. you get a Bupkis.
Beeftongue also is there though
beeftongue is everything to me. most animal ever. i cant stop thinking about them. i see those strange little eyes in my dreams
oooh ahhh oughhhb oughh ouuuuu ee
I got Beeftongue a surprise! a new friend
while Beeftongue seemed perfectly content living with Bupkis’ Sarasinula plebia family, the new slug is another Leidyula floridana, and I hope there will be beeflings in the near future.
I actually have two new slugs. their names are Boudin (patternless) and Blutwurst (half-striped).
quite a colorful family now. also that bupkisette is doing a wonderful empanada impression
your slugs don't look like the slugs i'm used to, which just look like snails without shells. what's up with that? (i could google it but it's fun to ask questions)
it’s correct that most land slugs you see come from the same stock as the land snails you see! for the ease of language I will refer to all of these molluscs as “snails,” since a slug is just a snail whose shell has evolved to be absent or vestigial (leopard slug pictured has a tiny flat internal shell). there are even semi-slugs with a shell they can’t retract into! these snails all belong to the group Stylommatophora. I don’t really feel like going over all their distinctive traits, but I think most people are pretty familiar with these guys. there are a lot of them and they exist almost everywhere.
veronicellids like mine belong to the order Systellommatophora, a smaller group of snails that I believe evolved to live on land independently from the stylommatophorans. the two orders both make up the superorder Pulmonata, so they’re about as closely related as hedgehogs are to goats.
systellommatophorans comprise the semi-marine onch slugs, the veronicellid slugs, and the carnivorous rathouisiid slugs. all living systellommatophorans have no shells are are commonly called slugs.
however, a relic of their shelled past is still visible on their undersides:
see that little orifice on the right of their belly?
that’s the genital pore. since gastropods’ shells typically coil to the right, their anuses, sexual organs, and breathing holes typically are also always rightwards-oriented. veronicellids’ anuses are towards the tail end (bizarre for a once-shelled gastropod) but also are slightly to the right of center.
leatherleafs might be symmetrical from a top view, but their bellies hide evidence of a time when their ancestors had hard shells to coil up in!
i know you handle your pesty babs as little as possible, but my autism's gotta know: is there a textural difference between the underside of the the's or is it just darker on their backs but they feel the same all over?
the back and the underside of the mantle are slightly dry and bumpy but the skin produces slippery mucus on contact (you can see the area I touched become moistened) so they’re typically very smooth to feel.
the foot (middle “tread” line) is very sticky and soft since that’s how they move around. still drier than most slugs, and their mucus is thin and watery, evaporating with no noticeable residue.
other veronicellids are slimier and can produce copious amounts of vile, milky goo, although S. plebia only do so when their life is in danger and I’ve never known L. floridana to do so.
only handled for demonstration purposes
(Sarasinula plebia)
gave the kids cucumber for the first time in a while. look at all those happy faces!
(Sarasinula plebia)
Bupkis… would you happen to know whose teeth marks those are on the squash
