Gastrodonta interna on the prowl

Early this morning in Shakerag Hollow the humidity was so high that water droplets drifted through the air. We were walking in a halo.

The settling water ruined the invisibility of spider webs. This one hung ten feet above the ground.

Snails and slugs were active, especially around the bases of dead trees. Probably at least half of the species of land molluscs in this forest dwell in or under dead wood.

Gastrodonta interna, the “brown bellytooth,” was particularly abundant. The small ribs on its body whorls make the shell looks like a tightly coiled rope. The shell is small, about 7 mm wide, and has about 8 or 9 whorls.

4 thoughts on “Gastrodonta interna on the prowl

  1. larry williams

    For the first time in my life, I seen a slug hanging from a web coming from himself, it was dropping down from a hanging basket of ferns. At first I thought that he was just caught in a web, but it wasn’t. Have slugs always been able to do that.

    Reply
    1. David George Haskell Post author

      Slugs cannot make silk (the way spiders can), but they do sometimes hang from threads of slime. A few species conduct their whole mating sequence suspended on these strands.

      Reply

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