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podcat
Skeptic Friend
435 Posts |
Posted - 06/23/2009 : 20:50:47 [Permalink]
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I found this as part of an answer to a question about slugs:
I hope your developing interest in slugs will turn you from an
exterminator into a malacologist (a person who studies molluscs, which
includes not only the snails but also their more distant relatives, the
oysters, clams, octopuses and the like).
Found at: http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2001-07/996094204.Zo.r.html
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“In a modern...society, everybody has the absolute right to believe whatever they damn well please, but they don't have the same right to be taken seriously”.
-Barry Williams, co-founder, Australian Skeptics |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 06/23/2009 : 20:54:56 [Permalink]
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Malacologist. Cool. Thanks, podcat!
Sluggo has shown up two nights in a row, now.
Edited to add that at the link podcat provided, I read this:...(the more easily noticed large hole thru the mantle also on the right side is the breathing hole). Whooops. So that's not a scar, after all. Which means that Sluggo may not be Sluggo, but some other slug.
Oh, well. It's still cool to watch.
Edited again to say that there's a great photo of the air hole over at Zooillogix. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 06/24/2009 : 02:14:21 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Malacologist. Cool. Thanks, podcat!
Sluggo has shown up two nights in a row, now.
Edited to add that at the link podcat provided, I read this:...(the more easily noticed large hole thru the mantle also on the right side is the breathing hole). Whooops. So that's not a scar, after all. Which means that Sluggo may not be Sluggo, but some other slug.
Oh, well. It's still cool to watch.
Edited again to say that there's a great photo of the air hole over at Zooillogix.
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It's quite possible that it's the same one; they have a pretty limited travel range, and there's that slime trail thing. As long as a garter snake doesn't come along, you may well get to enjoy Sluggo all summer.
Thanks for the info, podcat. I didn't know that.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 06/24/2009 : 19:15:13 [Permalink]
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I knew it at some point but had completely forgot, being a fish person, my main contact with malacology was with the aquatic ones.
Cool beasties, all of them. |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 06/29/2009 : 21:32:22 [Permalink]
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| No visits from any slugs between my last posts and now. Either it's a different slug, or Sluggo is growing really well. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2009 : 07:37:56 [Permalink]
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| Maybe it changed into a butterfly already... what? |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2009 : 08:49:16 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Simon
Maybe it changed into a butterfly already... what?
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No, more likely.....
It is why slugs, those marvelous, little bags of protein with a high reproduction rate, were created on the 6th day and held a place of honor in the bilges of the Ark.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2009 : 12:19:21 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
No visits from any slugs between my last posts and now. Either it's a different slug, or Sluggo is growing really well. |
That didn't come out right. I hadn't seen any slugs for days, but last night, a slug did appear on my drainpipe. Either it's a different slug, or Sluggo is growing very well. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 07/05/2009 : 21:22:51 [Permalink]
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No slugs on the fence-top since last I updated.
However... I use a couple of sawhorses and a six-foot-long 1x12 to set off cheesy Virginia-legal fireworks, like I did last night. After the festivities are all done, I hose all the spent fireworks down, and rinse the burnt stuff off the board. I left the board out in the backyard last night to dry off, resting across a sandbox that my wife made me build for the boy (who didn't use it much). Tonight, there's a big slug making its way across that board.
It's over 12 feet away from the fence-top, so whether it is Sluggo or not is anyone's guess.
Interestingly, as I watched it move, I noticed that it was leaving little 1/4-inch-long streaks of moisture on the wood (there's much better light there than on the fence-top). These streaks were spaced between a half-inch and 3/4-inch apart, and vanished over time as they dried (a minute or so). I said to myself, how odd, a slug leaving a dotted slime trail. But that wasn't the case. Moving around to the other side of the sandbox, so I would get the direct bounce of the porch light, I could see a hair-thin trail of slime between each streak of moisture on the wood, apparently not actually stuck to the wood except at points inside the streaks.
So while I had been under the impression that slugs leave a slug-width trail of slime wherever they go, as I had seen from other snails before, it appears that that's not always the case.
And how a four-inch-long, half-inch-wide slug can moisten a wooden plank only in 1/4-inch-long, 1/8-inch-wide streaks is a question I'll have to leave unanswered for now. Enticing a slug to crawl across tissue paper isn't high on my priorities list. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 07/06/2009 : 11:05:33 [Permalink]
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Isn't the moisting part of the gasteropode's motility? One would expect it to happen on the whole of the animal's contact surface with the ground.
But then, slugs are differently shaped from snails with a higherer contact surface ratio compared to its toal size and weight so maybe reducing friction is not as important... |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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podcat
Skeptic Friend
435 Posts |
Posted - 07/10/2009 : 22:17:20 [Permalink]
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| Glad my link was of some use. Keep us posted on Sluggo. |
“In a modern...society, everybody has the absolute right to believe whatever they damn well please, but they don't have the same right to be taken seriously”.
-Barry Williams, co-founder, Australian Skeptics |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
 Posted - 08/22/2009 : 17:25:30 [Permalink]
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| Very cool Dave!!! |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Is there a slugologist in the house?
