The secret world of slugs and snails

The Secret World of Slugs and Snails: Life in the Very Slow Lane by David George Gordon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Now I know...

--what a wild snail eating sounds like: "... a cross between a bastard file and a chainsaw - like something out of Evil Dead II."

-- Some snails have elaborate mating rituals that involve kissing.

-- Speculation about Cupid's arrows in Greek mythology being inspired by the "love darts" that snails shoot into each other if they go the male/female route instead of using their hermaphroditic prowess.

-- that Darwin observed another scientist's experiment in which a sickly snail and its healthy partner were placed in an ill-provided garden. The healthy snail crawled away, over a wall, into a better garden. 24 hours later, it "returned and apparently communicated the result of its successful exploration, for both then started along the same track and disappeared over the wall."

-- That David George Gordon is one of the best nature writers ever.

Did you read The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating? Read this next. Really.




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