Photoblog #20 || Can we love slugs?... I guess yes!

_{Canon EOS 750D | Iso-500 | f/6.3 | 1/500s | 55mm}

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Walking along the beach of Jönköping, I found on my way these curious creatures that look like snails but without their shell. Many people consider them disgusting; in my case, they seemed interesting to me because it is the first time I see these mollusks, which I stopped to take some shots. Investigating more about these animals, I found five reasons to admire them.

• Most slugs are scavengers, i.e., they eat organic matter in decomposition and, that can be useful. Its diet includes dead and rotten plants, leaf litter, fungoid wood, fallen fruit, animal excrement, poisonous mushrooms and, organic fertilizer. If you find them nibbling idly at a leaf as was my case it is because the plant is already dead.

• If you want to inspire children with the wonder of the natural world, slugs are easy and accessible educational accessories. Up close, admire the telescopic eye and the stems of the head (as I did through the lens of my camera), also the large breathing hole, or pneumostoma. On the right side of the body (like snails, slugs do not they are symmetrical), admire the waves it makes with its muscles to move while leaving a large liquid drool behind it. It can be disgusting, but children are explorers by nature.

_{Canon EOS 750D | Iso-800| f/5.6 | 1/400s | 55mm}

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• The great gray slug (Limax Maximus) is a voracious predator. They also eat snails, who are the main culprits of chopped vegetables, earthworms, and other insect larvae; therefore, if you have a garden, it could help you to keep it free of these pests. Also, they can be cannibals, so if you want to have them as pets, it's not a good idea to keep them together.

• The sexual encounter of these animals is a marvel to behold. Two hermaphroditic slugs are found on the branch of a tree or among the leaf litter and secrete a thick rope of very slimy drool, by which they rotate between them. Each one inflates a large, pale, and white penis; they intertwine, and each slug fertilizes the other.

_Source

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• Although they do not have the protection of a shell, slugs compensate for this disadvantage with their smooth, flexible and lubricated bodies. They can enter even in the smallest cracks. This fact makes them truly subterranean creatures because they can easily bury a meter to the ground.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR VISIT

_{Posted it originally on LBRY and Cent}

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