Setting new standards of slow TV, here's an opportunity to contemplate the poetry in motion of this pure white slug, slowly sliding and sensing its way across a muddy track in Kenya's Mount Elgon National Park.
Most visitors to national parks in Africa are seeking large mammals and birds, but all life-forms are protected - even invertebrates normally regarded as garden pests. To a naturalist, every species in its natural habitat is fascinating and even beautiful - though admittedly this beauty is in the eye of only the minority of beholders and most small animals are overlooked in the search for the 'Big Five' or someone adding a bird species to their 'life list'.
Slugs are gastropod (literally 'stomach-foot') molluscs, with a mantle rather than a shell like their relatives the snails. Their ability to glide effortlessly along seems mysterious from above, but underneath, waves of muscular contractions flow down the foot propelling the animal forwards on a mucus film, secreted as they go along. With the low camera angle here, you can see how the two lower sensory tentacles touch and react to the feel and taste of the ground, while the longer eye-stalks, or optical tentacles, literally keep an eye out for danger. If any viewer recognises the species, do let me know!
This is video No.48 to #BrightenYourDay and connect you to nature during the #Covid19 #lockdown - and maybe this one will stimulate your curiosity to find a hand-lens or magnifying glass and get down on your hands and knees in your garden or park to watch slugs - perhaps for the first time - up close and personal. You might be surprised at how amazing they are, and most are much more colourful than this fellow.