After reading this thread, I was curious. I haven’t seen many slugs in my day, so what happens to slugs when you put table salt on them?
I’d never try this, like the ants/magnifying glass thing (which i’m also curious about, i.e. why?!), but I have heard it referenced enough that I need to know. Do they curl up, or melt, or what?
Even Cecil didn’t answer this. Cecil says they shrivel, then someone else comes in and says they melt. Which is it? Does it depend on the weather?? Someone had to do this as a kid!
Salted slugs die, messily. First the salted bit shrivels, then the slug ruptures in a gooey manner. It is gross.
Ants under a magnifying glass run out of the hot spot. If you track them with it, they stop, curl up, and steam/smoke, leaving a curled and crispy ant-corpse.
I don’t know the physic details of it, but the salt forces the water out of their slimy little bodies, and yeah, they basically melt. It ain’t pretty and I’m sure it’s not a pleasant way to die, but hey, that’s what they get for ravaging my hostas.
I only did this one time and it was disgusting and made me dry heave. The slug became the most mucousy-messy-slimy-whitey-puss-covered thing i ever saw.
Wow! Thanks for the responses, very interesting. Cecil said they shriveled up… I wonder if he salted them more quickly and thoroughly than most. Maybe a little melts, a lot preserves?
Maybe submersing them in salt totally keeps them from melting?
As for the ants, knowing that you have to “track” them answers that for me. Boys!
Oh and on preview, caubeck, you taste them first, then add salt. Etiquette!
The skin of a slug is very moist and fairly delicate; putting crystalline salt on it draws the water out of the slug’s body by osmosis - the slug reacts to this irritation by exuding protective slime (a similar sort of protective reaction as the way that our own eyes produce tears), but this is often insufficient to save it from becoming fatally dehydrated or suffering tissue damage at the point of contact.
Ah… thanks Mangetout, thats what I was wondering… if salt simply ruptured the slug-bag, or if it could do the opposite… If you packed a live slug in salt, would it stay intact? It’d be dead, but would it disintegrate into slime?
Or would you have seasoned-slug-salt?
And yeah, like Kalhoun asked, do they “writhe”? Do slugs have death throes?! I’ve seen bugs do it, and spiders jump away right before I am about to squash them… why not slugs?
I don’t know; it would be dehydrated pretty quickly, but I’m not sure if it would remain intact or not; the rapid transit of fluids out of the unfortunate creature’s skin might actually cause it to rupture.
I used to work with a guy who told me that when he was a kid he’d make ‘salt mazes’ for slugs. He would make the maze using two lines of salt, and then put slugs into the maze to see if it could find its way out. I don’t think he ever said if any did.
Oh that was going to be my next question. Only it involved a slug death circle.
I probably don’t want to know the answer. I’m guessing they randomly wander around into the salt and “melt”.
I would feel bad for them, but they’re a garden pest. Not in my garden, but if they were, NO MERCY! If I saw one anywhere else, i’d ignore it. If I saw one in my garden, the last thing i’d do is apply salt to it! Who pours salt into the garden?
*Disclaimer: I have nothing against slugs, haven’t had many encounters with them, they’re actually kind of cute in an ambiguous sort of way
As I’ve heard, they do writhe, and I’d imagine that it’s pain causing it. I doubt if a slug’s nervous system is highly developed, but I’m sure able to sense injury, and melting into a pile of goo is a pretty big injury.
Maybe I’m a softie, but I do care. I don’t want to cause anything pain if I can help it. It’s not their fault they’re slugs. They’re just trying to make a living, and who can blame them for flocking to big, tender, juicy plants?
[/quote]
The UK’s National Angling Alliance described the study’s finding’s as “surprising”.
Dr Bruno Broughton, a fish biologist and NAA adviser, said: "I doubt that it will come as much of a shock to anglers to learn that fish have an elaborate system of sensory cells around their mouths…
“However, it is an entirely different matter to draw conclusions about the ability of fish to feel pain, a psychological experience for which they literally do not have the brains,” he said.
He quoted from a study by Professor James Rose of the University of Wyoming, US, in which it was found fish did not possess the necessary and specific regions of the brain, the neocortex.
[/quote]
And yet there is controversy. You can read the links to see the agruments that fish do experience ‘pain’.
But this thread is about slugs. Based on what I’ve read, including an article in Dive Training magazine last year that featured the studies in the first link, I would say that some fish feel pain and others do not. Since slugs are simpler organisms than fish, I do not think they feel ‘pain’.
When I was a kid and bored one time, I discovered that dish detergent is also a great enemy to slugs. It literally makes them melt down into nothing - there’s just a puddle left. I doused slugs with dish soap a few times out of fascination, but now that I’m older and wiser I realize it was awfully cruel; I mean, slugs can be pests but they’re just doing their sluggy things, they know no better. I probably have a lot of bad karma racked up.
Aw, don’t be so rough on yourself. I think the little guys just kinda die. I agree with the other posters who say they’re too simple to really feel pain. Geez…I hope so, anyway… :eek:
Hmm…I’m not so sure about the “not feel pain” business.
Having spent the last 30 years here on the west coast (pretty much giant slug central); they do recoil at the touch, and writhe pretty badly when (accidently) stepped on.
Oh, here’s a Bubba who has done the salt maze thing (with a happy outcome):
I’ve seen video of these, out at the trailhead of the West Coast trail, taken by the Wardens at Port Renfrew. Weird little bugger, fastest slug I’ve ever seen. Doesn’t so much jump as wiggle and curl.
There are few things in this world I dislike more than slugs . Stepping on one barefoot is among the NASTIEST things you can imagine . Except , of course , when you have 2 big , fat , slimy slugs crawl up your outside window and hang from a thread of slime to mate … and yes , they DO do this . :eek: Nasty , nasty , nasty .
Many years ago when I had an outside cat , I obviously fed him outside , dry food in a tin pie pan . The slugs thought this was a buffet put out JUST for them , and they would COVER the cat food . What to do , what to do ? Ah ha !! I decided to pour a ring of salt around the pie pan , and it WORKED . Worked beautifully … except for that ‘starburst’ of dead slugs left around the pan when they would mindlessly crawl into the salt . :dubious:
Boys!
Ah ha !! I decided to pour a ring of salt around the pie pan , and it WORKED . Worked beautifully … except for that ‘starburst’ of dead slugs left around the pan when they would mindlessly crawl into the salt . :dubious: