Monday 28 June 2010

Even more snails!

[Strangled connection again. Must be more frugal with my downloads.]

I was planning to investigate the wait-a-while for snails, but decided not to disturb the pademelon posse that had settled down next to it. (Plant to right, just out of picture.)


Really, who could be heartless enough to shift this little poppet?


But I didn't have to move the marsupials, because the snails came to me. This one was grazing on the lid of the recycling bin.



Another, almost certainly the same species, was moseying around the garden.


As was this one, which, at about 30mm long, was the largest of the three.


Semislugs (family Helicarionidae) are common in rainforest and wet sclerophyll forest along the east coast. They come in a variety of sizes and shell shapes, but always have that little pointed tail tip. In many species, extensions (lappets or lobes) of the mantle cover the shell. You can see them partly retracted to reveal the shell in the recycling bin snail.

[I'll talk about these animals in detail when my satellite connection goes back to normal in a few days.]