27.000 Teeth!

   I am finally free to hike as I wish other than back too far in the creek.  That is still off limits but only due to the sogginess of the ground. The nightly rains have dumped enough water to fill the creek and let it spill over into the woods.  Not wanting to become mired, I stick to higher ground and nose around in just about any nook and cranny I can find.  This afternoon, I flipped over a rotted log and found...nothing...except a slug.  A lone leopard slug was happily munching on some mold that was growing on dead leaves.  I watched the critter for a while and then lightly replaced the log.  There was no sense in bothering the poor little guy.

  Now for a fun fact!  Slugs very rarely (if ever) bite!  They just sort of slime along when threatened.  That slime is enough to deter most predators so they pretty much live in peace.  But!  Did you know that slugs have teeth?  They do!  In fact, a common slug has about 27,000 teeth!  The teeth are lined up in a fashion that makes them look and act a lot more like a cheese grater than fangs.  To be able to digest the whole assortment (of everything) that it eats, the slug has to have some way of helping it decompose.  Chewing is not a strong point of a slug so it sort of "grates" its food through a series of rows of teeth.  

  Having that many teeth could, indeed, make a slug a ferocious predator.  While there are some that will eat insects, worms and even other slugs, most are content to munch a few leaves, some fungi or your lovely lilies.  We had better be glad that they are just slimy critters that would rather hide than attack.  Just imagine how scary it would be to have car sized slugs with 27,000 teeth!