Slug facts
Here are some things you may not have known about slugs.
- There are approximately 40 species of slug found in the UK, with only a small number of them considered as pest species.
- Slugs travel at speeds that vary from slow (0.013 m/s) to very slow (0.0028 m/s).
- If you are considering growing lettuce, the Cos variety has proved the most slug-resistant.
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[1] Great grey slug (Limax maximus) [2] Cos lettuce
- Slugs consume around forty times their weight in the space of a day
- Limax maximus, the great grey slug, can stretch to approximately twenty times its length in order to squeeze through narrow gaps.
- The largest UK slug is Limax cinereoniger, which can reach up to 25cm when fully grown.
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[3] Limax cinereoniger is Britains largest slug. [4] Leopard slugs eat fungi.
- Not all slugs eat lettuce; leopard slugs eat fungi, rotting plants and even other slugs, and there are three species of slugs, of the Testacella family, that eat earthworms.
- A slug has approximately 27,000 teeth!
- Slugs are food. All sorts of mammals, thrushes, slow worms, earthworms and insects eat them. Some people eat them, fried with garlic.
Slow worms, thrushes and badgers all eat slugs.
- Slug blood is green. The proteins in slug blood carry copper atoms instead of iron; copper also attracts oxygen. The copper gives the blood a bluish green colour.
- That was ten interesting things you probably didn’t know about slugs; here is an extra one for luck: slugs can live for six years.
We have a number of leopard slugs in our compost bins, is this good or bad? Some are huge!
Leopard slugs are a Good Thing. They eat rotting vegetation and fungi so the compost bin is the right place for them; they also hunt and eat the little slugs that are eating your lettuce. Perhaps you could try putting a couple among your lettuce seedling one night as guard-slugs.
‘Guard-slugs’ sound like a good idea!