Ever Fed Your Snailies Wet Paper?

[slimysnailies]

Just a creepy question. Paper actually works pretty good for my snails/slug. I use sticky notes, and I run em under a faucet to get them wet.

[pinkunicorn]

Some snails love paper, lol. They actually get a lot of calories out of it as they can digest cellulose. It's just sugar to them in funny form. I've not given it to my snails or slugs though. I never thought about it despite knowing they eat it. Better not give too much though, there are additives in commercial paper and it may not be good for the snails in large doses. It can't be too dangerous, though, given they eat paper trash in the wild as part of the decomposition process.

[actos]

What about the dye in the post-it notes? Wouldn't it be harmful? Or the print in newspapers?

[pickalilly]

Yes, it probably would be harmful

[pinkunicorn]

The harm depends on the type of dye or ink used. I'm pretty sure modern inks are free of heavy metals and other environmentally dangerous chemicals, because they are made biodegradable. They also need to be safe for humans, for example infants who put everything into their mouths, or just adults who handle paper with their hands. There can't be anything overly dangerous, because it would put everyone at risk. Paper industry is a bit too large to be unregulated, at least in the developed world. I'm not 100% sure of the US situation, there may be somewhat less regulation on what can be put into paper mass/dyes/inks, but in the EU it's pretty strict because of the risk to humans, and the environment. It's also not a very recent area of regulation, for example newspaper inks used to contain lead and other heavy metals which caused pollution of soil and waters as the paper got into the environment, so the effects are pretty well known unlike, say, some current cosmetics ingredients that are just starting to be regulated as the negative environmental effects are starting show (eg. parabens and SLS in lotions/creams and shampoos, respectively).

So, I'd not feed a lot of dyed paper to any animals, but I doubt it's very dangerous consumed in small amounts. A more imminent danger about a paper diet is the lack of nutrients, since paper only contains sugar, carbohydrates in the form of cellulose. That's why snails eat it because it's a source of a lot of calories (to them, and all animals that can digest cellulose, but not humans) and they're attracted to high-calorie foods like all animals. But if they fill up on plain cellulose, it's a bit like a human filling up on plain white bread and nothing else. There's even less other nutrients than in white bread, no proteins and no fats, no minerals and vitamins. And that's dangerous, more dangerous than substances that are likely to pass through the gut undigested.

But yeah, sola dosis facit venenum. The dose makes the poison.

[slimysnailies]

I don't really feed them a lot of wet paper, so i don't really think it would hurt them that bad.

[malacophile]

Despite the fact that it's widely considered to be non-toxic, ink is usually a petroleum-based product. In some publications, it may be made from soy, which is another problem entirely. (I cover soy in this thread: petsnails.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=12383)

Petroleum is a potent endocrine disruptor known to cause a host of nasty health problems in humans and animals, including DNA and neurological damage. Some of the components of common inks include heavy metals (lead, arsenic, mercury, selenium, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, titanium), benzene, P-Anisidine, toluene, naphthalene, polycyclicaromatic hydrocarbons and petroleum distillates. Basically, it's just a poison slurry. It's pretty apparent by the smell alone. I certainly don't recommend feeding it to snails and slugs. And regarding arsenic, well, that used to be the active ingredient in slug and snail bait.

www.ecologycenter.org/erc/petroleum/body.html
www.paperrep.com/content/printing-ink.aspx
www.chem-tox.com/
healthvermont.gov/enviro/indoor_air/Benzene.aspx
www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9927436
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexavalent_chromium#Toxicity
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycyclic_aromatic_hydrocarbon#Human_health
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15767354

Don't even get me started on what's wrong with the paper itself.

www.paperonweb.com/chemical.htm
www.bodyfueling.net/ARTICLES/chlorine1.html

[tsrebel]

Yes please: What is wrong with the paper itself? I know it is like sugar to them. But a little nip of recycled toiletpaper or non-printed standard paper?

[malacophile]

Pure white paper, like printer paper or lined paper, is going to have the highest chemical content. Unfortunately, things made from recycled newspaper could be a problem, too, because of the chemicals they use to remove the ink. It's known to contain bisphenol A, bisphenol S, various corrosive substances (sodium hydroxide, ammonia, lime) , asbestine (similar to asbestos), heavy metals and plenty of chlorine. There are also a slew if substances I know nothing about.

www.naturalnews.com/036497_BPA_BPS_chemical.html
www.health.ny.gov/environmental/emergency/chemical_terrorism/chlorine_tech.htm
www.health.ny.gov/environmental/emergency/chemical_terrorism/ammonia_tech.htm
www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002487.htm
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120615103531.htm
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120711210241.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_S#Occurence_and_Toxicity


Keep in mind that I'm just going by what I know of American paper manufacturing/recycling. I know absolutely nothing of how it's done in Europe or other areas of the world. I know many countries have banned a lot of the harmful substances that are still widely used in the USA.

[tsrebel]

Thanks!

[pinkunicorn]

Yeah, the US situation is likely very different from the EU situation. A lot of that stuff has been long banned in the EU. Bisphenol A is used in light-reactive paper such as receipts, but not in "normal" paper and chlorine and other nasty stuff is never used in paper that has one of the trusted environment labels, such as the Scandinavian Swan Label (or whatsitcalled in English). Most Scandinavian paper has it and I see it quite often here in Western Europe too. Especially Germany and Netherlands are big on ecological standards.

I'm still unconvinced that small amounts of even the "bad stuff" containing paper is very harmful, as most of these substances require long term (sometimes cumulative) exposure to affect health, or a very large single dose. So a snail eating paper occasionally isn't in danger, though there's no reason to purposefully feed them paper if other foods are available. It's a bit different how some of these chemicals behave in an individual separated from the environment than they do when let out, say, in a stream or a lake where the damage can be significant due to the amounts present and cumulative effect.

Stuff like cadmium sounds nasty when it's in the context of say, ink, but actually we get far more of cadmium from eating bread than handling (or eating) newspaper. Cadmium used to be added to gasoline and it's been spread in large quantities to fields all over the world, and plants readily absorb it. It cumulates into us over a lifetime. It's likely the pet snails also get more cadmium from the food they eat than from eating paper. Organic food is no exception to soil pollutants, only to the pesticides added in while growing.

I agree that all those substances are harmful and it'd be good to not get any at all into us, but I always advice putting the exposure sources into perspective. There's so much unavoidable exposure sources that they make the dangerous-sounding sources look like a drop in the sea when compared. Of course the argument can be made that any source is too much and I agree, but I'd start cutting from the bigger sources that are more likely to have a major impact. Like the EU has done. I wish the US political culture would change enough to allow some cutting to be done there as well.

[malacophile]

That's true. Besides, I can't even be certain that slugs and snails (or even most other non-mammals) will even be affected by things the exact same way.

Also, I've had some suspicion that our land-dwelling mollusk friends aren't as vulnerable to toxic substances as people think. I did work harvesting blueberries for commercial use three years ago, and the fields were sprayed regularly. I can't remember the specific pesticide name, but I recall that it was a pretty nasty one. Despite that, the fields were loaded with extremely large, numerous and robust snails, slugs, spiders and grasshoppers. None of them seemed to be even remotely affected by the poisons. Either it just didn't hurt them much, or they developed a tolerance to it. Either way, it demonstrates the ability of these animals to withstand quite a lot, chemical-wise.

I also agree about the USA needing to make some changes. Almost everything here is done in such a way that ensures the corporations make as much money as possible, to hell with the rest of us.

[pinkunicorn]

Every slug and snail that survives a spraying and proceeds to lay eggs will produce offspring that are more resistant to pesticides, yeah. Over the decades of spraying you get lots of plant and animal populations that have become resistant, it's a common "problem" in agriculture. Even stuff like RoundUp has caused weeds to naturally evolve resistance. It's one of the insanities of modern agriculture, as it's a continuous arms race to develop stronger pesticides to keep up with nature... same applies to antibiotics and bacteria, and agricultural use of them is again to blame. It's a very simple basic fact of biology why this happens, and has been happening ever since the first molecules that could be called "life" appeared, and it's happening right before our eyes but instead of accepting it and adapting to it we keep battling a war we can't win. Nature will always find a way.

I could go on for hours about this lol!

[vallery]

Hi slimysnailies ,

How long have you been feeding them sticky notes?

vallery