How little slugs are made.

I am a great believer in probability. This, of course, refers to the chance of a particular event occurring. The caveat here is that any particular event will eventually occur with or without me, so really the question becomes, "What are the chances that I will witness the occurrence?"

This then is, as Shakespeare said, "Is the rub." Every time you put yourself in any particular situation there is a chance you will be witness to some specific event. Nature rarely values randomness, so the likelihood that an occurrence will happen can be mitigated or enhanced by factors such as time, location, and activity. A good example of this relates to the bears that live in our area. The more times I go outside and the farther I stray from my yard the greater the chances of seeing a bear. That chance increases in the spring and decreases in winter. Day, night, availability of food, and other such variables enter into the equation, but there is 0 chance of me witnessing a bear if I never leave the comfort of my living room (unless one decides to become an uninvited guest, which also exists as an extremely remote probability).

This brings me to the above photograph. So, what do random events and bears have to do with a pair of slugs busily engaged in the process of making little slime crawlers like themselves? Well, the answer relates to probability.

Every time I go outside there is a chance I will be witness to some awesome event. Things like having a Peregrine falcon swoop past my ear at 200 km/hr or finding an intact skull of a mid-sized mammal will more likely happen outside rather than in. The chances increase the farther I am into the wilderness. I shouldn't be too surprised then to come across something I have never seen before. While out hiking about on a nature trail, lifting the odd piece of wood to see what biological treasures may be lurking, I discovered a pair of slugs mating. I have seen lots of slugs, and have some rather grand stories about them that my wife would prefer that I not share, but I have never seen them engaged in a copulatory position. The moral to this story is that the more time you spend in nature's presence the greater chance you will see some of her hidden secrets.

Slugs are hermaphroditic; each individual has both male and female sex organs. This is true for many of the molluscs (a group including clams, squids, and chitons), although not all of them. They lay their eggs in a protected area and leave them to develop without any care. The young hatch after a month or so, the length of time varies with temperature. Slugs may live for a year or two if predators or weather don't make them succumb before their time is up. Slugs are not eaten by a lot of things, but snakes, salamanders, and some birds will take them.

Thanks for reading.     Ericspix     Eric Svendsen

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