Large black slug
The large black slug is a big, shiny black slug with a bumpy back. It has no shell on its back, so it keeps safe with lots of slime.
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Fun facts
Baby black slugs are brown or creamy white. They turn grey and then black as they grow up.
It can crawl up to 4.5 centimetres in a minute.
It makes three kinds of slime. Two help it slide along and stop it drying out, and one keeps hungry animals away.
It breathes through a little hole on the right side of its body.
Each slug is both a mum and a dad. From August to October it can lay up to 150 eggs every one to three weeks.
Most asked questions about Large black slug
?What does the large black slug eat?
Almost everything: plants, fungi, dead leaves, dung, dead animals and earthworms.
?How big is the large black slug?
It grows about 10 to 15 centimetres long when it stretches out.
?How long does a black slug live?
Usually about one year. It dies soon after laying its last eggs.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Arion ater
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Snails, slugs and worms
- Family
- Arionidae
- Classification
- Gastropoda > Stylommatophora > Arionidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Australia and Oceania, North America
- Also known as
- Black slug, Black arion, European black slug
Where the facts come from
- Arion ater (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Cwmhiraeth. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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