Slimy Worms (Slugs) in Great Britain

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We received an extremely detailed question about a worm a while back from a reader in England. The reader has been trying to identify the worm, which is gray and slimy, for the past nine years (since April 14th, 2006, to be exact). The reader found the creature under a discarded pillow in Holywells Park in the town of Ipswich, which is in Suffolk, England. (He even gave us an Ordnance Survey National Grid reference, a British geographic grid reference system, so that we could pinpoint the exact area where he found the worm.) The worm leaves a “slim-trail” behind it when it moves. The reader thought be might have found a “Worm Slug,” or Boettgerilla pallens, but he has since ruled out this possibility. What kind of slimy, gray worm is our reader finding?

First, here is the picture our reader sent in:

slug

As you can tell, this creature is in fact slimy, and in another picture the reader submitted to us, you can see the slime trail behind it.

We think our reader is right to think he found a slug, as all the available information points to this. (For the record, slugs technically aren’t worms, at least as we understand the word “worm.”) Slugs are “slimy” because they are covered in a type of mucus, and this mucus forms a trail when the slug moves around. These trails can be recognized by slugs of the same species, which in turn can help slugs find a mate. The “slime trails” are also used by carnivorous slugs to hunt their pray. The one thing that is somewhat unusual about the slug our reader found is that it doesn’t appear to have tentacles, as most slugs do, including so-called “worm slugs,” which is the precise species the reader thought he found. These tentacles, which serve a primitive optical function, are often mistaken as antennae, and they are a distinguishing feature of slugs. However, not all slugs have tentacles, and tentacles are also retractable, so conceivably the reader took the photo above when the slug’s tentacles weren’t visible. Also, the photo is fairly small, so we suppose it is also possible that the creature has tentacles, but that we just can’t see them because they blend in with the creature’s body color or background.

Unfortunately, however, we can’t offer our reader a precise species identification, which would be hard to do from a small photograph anyway. There are tens of thousands of different species in the world, and Britain has a particularly diverse population of slugs. We recommend that our reader consult slug identification guides for Britain, and he can start by looking at online resources like this guide to slug identification published by Cardiff University. We hope our reader’s long quest to identify the creature he found will conclude successfully.

 

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Slimy Worms (Slugs) in Great Britain
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Slimy Worms (Slugs) in Great Britain
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We received an extremely detailed question about a worm a while back from a reader in England.
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