Slugs eating snails

[jembolina]

Hello friends - long time!

I made a snail sanctuary on my balcony using a 1m² raised garden bed with a mesh dome over the top (for helix aspersa). It's impossible to search for eggs in there so predictably it's full of babies.

A few weeks ago I noticed some slugs had found their way into the snail home but thought it'd be fine to just leave them be.

Last night I saw a slug on top of a baby snail and picked up the piece of lettuce they were on to make sure the snail was okay. The slug had his head up inside the snail's shell eating him! I picked up the slug and tried to pull the snail away from it but it held the snail really tightly, squirming its head inside the shell. When I managed to pull the snail away it didn't look like there was a whole lot of snail left. He was certainly dead.

I removed all the slugs I could find from the snail home and put them in my apartment complex's communal garden.

Is this normal? I didn't realise a slug would eat a snail

I'm not sure of the slug species - if any of you are in Sydney, Australia it was just the really common grey slug species with black stripes that are everywhere.

PS tonight a cockroach went in there. Cockroaches wouldn't eat snails would they? I think it's a Smoky-brown or American cockroach.

[morningcoffee]

It was probably a snail that was already dead, and the slug was eating the body. Slugs and snails have both been observed to eat dead members of their own species, probably because it's a good source of protein in the wild.

[jembolina]

That's a good point and I hope it was the case. Thanks for your input

It isn't that uncommon for me to find empty baby shells. I assumed it was the little bugs in the soil that seem to break down old veggies and things in there that were the sole culprits of disposing of dead bodies. Maybe the slugs and snails are doing it too.

I'm not sure why some of the babies die. There's always plenty of food in there (I plant heads of lettuce as well as buk choy, chia and various kinds of lettuce seeds regularly and also add new chopped raw veggies and kale every few days) and it's never completely dry. Yet sometimes the babies just seem to just retract further and further back in their shells while attached to a wall until they die. It's only the babies that this ever happens to. Sometimes if I notice one sleeping who is deeply retracted I'll wake him up with water and put him on some food next to some powdered cuttle but even then they'll sometimes just go back to a wall and go to sleep without eating. They didn't really do this when I had them in a big plastic storage container inside.

[jembolina]

I feel like a bit of a jerk picking the slug up with my fingers and pulling the snail away from it if he was just eating an already dead snail. I didn't know that though (and still don't feel certain enough to let the slugs keep living in the snail home).

It must have felt very threatened because it excreted a lot of really strange thick slime onto my fingers that wouldn't wash of with soap and water and needed to be scrubbed off with a coarse cloth. I didn't realise slugs had such different slime to snails.

[snailboat]

I think if you rub your hands together, you can roll the slug slime into a ball of sorts, and that works a little better than putting more water on it. (I haven't handled slugs very many times, though.)

[Cashell]

Yep, I have some snails that seem to love eating my dead brown-lips, so I now how you feel about this strange behaviour. Most will say that it's just what they do in the wild.

[Zorst]

I've seen snails in the wild eating other dead snails, slugs and even dead birds and rabbits. Its a source of protein to them, I make sure that all my captive snails get some meat every few weeks, usually some cooked lamb from off the bone.

I leave some on the bone and put the bone in there tanks n they eat it from there. This way I know the meat isn't the seasoned stuff as that's already been eaten by us. I also wash the bone before I put it in the tank so I'm doubly sure there nothing on it to harm the snails. They all seem to love it and eat what they need, often they will rasp the bone as well. I leave it in the tank for about 24 at most 48 hrs.

It may sound UGH but I try to keep them as natural as possible and this is what they do in the wild so that's what I try to mimic for them. They all look well for it and seem happy healthy snails.

Zorst

[jembolina]

I'm okay with slugs eating dead snails; just not slugs eating live ones.

I'm vegan so my snails won't be getting any meat (I already guiltily buy them cuttlefish bones and need to find powdered limestone instead).

They would get plenty of protein from plant foods (as do I) so I'm not worried about their protein levels.

I spent half an hour looking up whether a cockroach would ever eat a live snail the other night when one got in the snail home. I'm just terrified of things hurting them

[Cashell]

May 16, 2014 11:29:21 GMT jembolina said:

I'm okay with slugs eating dead snails; just not slugs eating live ones.

I'm vegan so my snails won't be getting any meat (I already guiltily buy them cuttlefish bones and need to find powdered limestone instead).

They would get plenty of protein from plant foods (as do I) so I'm not worried about their protein levels.

I spent half an hour looking up whether a cockroach would ever eat a live snail the other night when one got in the snail home. I'm just terrified of things hurting them

Dead or alive I personally find it creepy...