Red slug
The red slug is one of the biggest slugs around. It is often bright reddish orange, but it can also be brown, yellowish, grey or even black. When you poke it, it rocks from side to side like a little rocking boat.
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Fun facts
When it rests, it pulls itself into a round dome shape.
It comes out mostly at night, but rain brings it out in the daytime too.
A grown-up slug can weigh more than 300 times as much as when it hatched.
Every slug is both a boy and a girl at the same time.
Its eggs are round, white and about 5 millimetres across.
Most asked questions about Red slug
?Why does the red slug rock from side to side?
It rocks when it is bothered, sometimes for many minutes. This rocking helps experts tell it apart from other big slugs.
?What does a red slug eat?
It is an omnivore, which means it eats plants and other food too.
?How big is a red slug?
Stretched out, it can be up to 15 centimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Arion rufus
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Snails, slugs and worms
- Family
- Arionidae
- Classification
- Gastropoda > Stylommatophora > Arionidae
- Lives on
- Europe, North America
- Also known as
- Large red slug, Chocolate arion, European red slug
Where the facts come from
- Arion ater rufus (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 © Colin Erickson. CC BY-SA 4.0, 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 hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.
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