They are typically oblong, being thicker in the center and tapered at each end. They have tentacles that look like antennae, on which they have eyes. They have a slimy, gelatinous appearance and feel to them. They may be a color similar to lawn debris, including gray, green, brown, black, and yellow.
Description: Most people recognize land snails and slugs when they see them: They have moist, soft, elongated bodies with a definite “foot” and a head with paired tentacles. Slugs lack visible shells, while snails have coiled shells composed of hard calcium carbonate.
Fun Slug Facts for Kids:
Slugs don't have shells, meaning they have less protection than snails. However, this allows them to slither under the soil more easily and hide there from any predators. Slugs live in dark, damp places and often come out when it rains. Slugs lay eggs.
It has a lengthy, moist, unsegmented, squishy, and slimy body. A hard shell typically surrounds the body to protect it. The snail's head, neck, visceral hump, tail, and foot are all parts of its body. A pair of tentacles or feelers are on the head.
Both snails and slugs have two long tentacles sticking out from the head. Each tentacle has an eye at the tip. Snails and slugs move by gliding on a foot. They make a slimy fluid that helps the foot glide.
They are typically oblong, being thicker in the center and tapered at each end. They have tentacles that look like antennae, on which they have eyes. They have a slimy, gelatinous appearance and feel to them. They may be a color similar to lawn debris, including gray, green, brown, black, and yellow.
Snails and slugs eat with a jaw and a flexible band of thousands of microscopic teeth, called a radula. The radula scrapes up, or rasps, food particles and the jaw cuts off larger pieces of food, like a leaf, to be rasped by the radula.
Field Guide. Most people recognize land snails and slugs when they see them: They have moist, soft, elongated bodies with a definite “foot” and a head with paired tentacles. Slugs lack visible shells, while snails have coiled shells composed of hard calcium carbonate.
Similarities Between Slug and Snail
Eyespots at the endpoints of thin tentacles, downward-directed mouths, and single, wide, muscular, flat-bottom feet lubricated by mucus and coated with epithelial cilia are all features shared by both mollusks (slug and snail).
Most snails possess a soft, tube-shaped body, a muscular foot for locomotion, one or more pairs of tentacles emerging from the head, and small eyes at the top of the base of the main stalks. The most conspicuous feature that all species share is the spiral shell.
Snails need moisture to survive; so if the weather is not cooperating, they can actually sleep up to three years. It has been reported that depending on geography, snails can shift into hibernation (which occurs in the winter), or estivation (also known as 'summer sleep'), helping to escape warm climates.
A slug has two retractable pairs of tentacles. The upper pair of tentacles are called the optical tentacles and are the eyes of a slug. The optical tentacles have light sensitive eyespots on the end and can be re-grown if lost. These are also used for smell.
NEONATES: A newly-hatched slug is called a neonate, and their typical food of choice is algae and fungus. However, they can feed on vegetative parts of plants. Young neonates weigh between 1-10 mg. They don't travel far from home.
Some slugs are predators and eat other slugs and snails, or earthworms.
Slugs and snails have soft, flexible bodies with no bones.
That depends on where it lands, but generally the force of impact itself will probably not do much damage, and the slug will crawl away to somewhere nice.
In the great majority of species, it has two chambers; an auricle, which receives haemolymph from the gill or lung, and a ventricle, which pumps it into the aorta. However, some primitive gastropods possess two gills, each supplying its own auricle, so that their heart has three chambers.
FACT: Snails and slugs 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.
Worms and slugs have soft bodies, do not have arms or legs, and move by crawling. Worms crawl by stretching and contracting the strong muscles in their bodies. Slugs have a single muscular foot. The foot moves the slug in a wavelike motion, gliding along the surface.
While slugs are pretty much snails without shells, they don't seem to be jealous of their cousins' houses on the go. It's true that snails use their shells for protection—from other animals and from drying out in the sun.
The large slug is 470 μm long and contains ≈2,020 cells; the small one is 80 μm long and has ≈110 cells.
Slugs evolved from snails that gradually over time accumulated mutations that caused them to lose their shells. And this didn't just happen once. Instead, it looks like many different species of snails in many different places in the world independently lost their shells.
All slugs have two eyes on the end of long antenna and two smaller antennae below that are used to feel and taste it's surroundings.
Slugs don't sting; they don't suck our blood. Yet when the subject of repulsive creatures comes up, slugs are often the first ones that crawl to mind. The slug physique is not appealing—one broad muscular foot topped with a gut (thus the class name gastropod).
A slug has approximately 27,000 teeth – that's more teeth than a shark. Like sharks, slugs routinely lose and replace their teeth.