Most snails live for two or three years in cases of land snails , but larger snail species can survive up to 10 years in the wild! In captivity, however, the longest known lifespan of a snail is 25 years, which is the Helix Pomatia. Slugs and snails do not have ears and a nose like we do but they can still smell and they can detect some sounds through vibration. They use either their eye tentacles or two smaller tentacles below the eye tentacles for these senses.
The lower tentacles are also important for sensing taste and touch. Slugs and snails are very important. They provide food for all sorts of mammals, birds, slow worms, earthworms, insects and they are part of the natural balance. Upset that balance by removing them and we can do a lot of harm. Thrushes in particular thrive on them! After a slug has eaten and digested food a wide variety of plants, fungi, earthworms and carrion , a mucus string of scat leaves through its anus , which is hidden under the leathery patch called a mantle, located just behind its head.
Slugs and snails should be treated with dignity and respect, but this is too often ignored. It is easy to put yourself in the position of other mammals and realize that they can and do suffer. They scream and squeal when in pain and can even whine, just like humans do.
Slugs and snails do not make comparable sounds. The slug's trunk ends in a mucus pore, which is usually clogged with mucus. Inside the trunk under the portion covered by the left side of the mantle is its heart. The heart has just two chambers we have four!
Slugs have blood! Aside from its availability in the gardens of Princeton, the slug has a brain and a nervous system that can be kept alive for several days in test tubes.
In addition, the neurons, or nerve cells of its brain, range from to microns millionths of a meter in diameter, making them visible to the naked eye. Snails have a lot to think about when they make love—because they're hermaphrodites. Unlike you, garden snails can produce sperm like males and carry eggs like females at the same time. So one presumes that both copulating snails are eager to get that part done. Each eye-stalk can move independently and can be re-grown if lost.
The eye-stalks are also used for smell. The rasping mouth parts that will chew up your lettuce seedlings are under these tentacles. Slugs eat using a radula , a rasping, tongue-like organ, covered with thousands of tiny tooth-like protrusions called denticles.
Body openings include the anus and genitals, which are hidden under the mantel. The odd position of these openings so far forward on the body is a result of the slugs evolutionary descent from snails. In a snail these openings must be outside the shell nobody wants to poop in their own shell after all. Slugs are hermaphrodites with both male and female sex organs. A large respiratory pore, usually on the right side, called a pneumostome, leads to a single lung.
The keel or carina is a ridge that runs the length of the back in some slug species. As you can see, the slug is a very specialized creature, carefully constructed for living in moist places, feeding on vegetable matter, although some species are omnivorous and enjoy the occasional earthworm or fellow gastropod, and living life at a thoughtful, Buddha-like pace.
That is worth remembering when you encounter the adults while doing other chores; just snip them, stomp them, smash them; anything to separate head from tail. You are rapidly dehydrating and essentially burning them by doing this, and of course, it hurts. Slugs flinch when they just knock their eye stalks into something, but have you seen how a slug reacts when salt is poured on them?
They writhe in pain and agony until they finally die. An equally cruel method is to pour hot or boiling water over the collected slugs.
Some people freeze slugs and snails to death.
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