They are slow and squishy. They have soft bodies and no shells. They have basically no way to defend themselves, from what I know.
I’d assume that there are some poisonous species, but other than that: how have these things not died out yet??
They do get eaten. It’s just that there are more slugs total than slugs that get eaten. This is also true for any other animal that isn’t an apex predator.
They do get eaten. It’s a numbers game.
Just to be a little more detailed than other answers:
Like they said, they get eaten a lot, but they also reproduce a lot more. Think about something like dust in a room. Dust has no chance against your cleaning, when you wipe off a surface, the dust is gone. Same if something decides to eat the slug, the slug is eaten.
But when you clean a room, do you always clean absolutely everywhere? Did you clean the dust from the top of the lamps? The dust from below the carpet? While you were off cleaning one side of the room, didn’t some new dust already settle on the surfaces you just cleaned? And so on.
So yes, you’re absolutely correct in everything you say. But defending yourself is not necessary when there’s just so much of your species that they can’t all get eaten at the same time.
It’s a numbers game, and the slugs are winning.
Foxes eat rabbits all the time, but they literally breed like rabbits, so there’s a balance of sorts. Birds eat bugs all the time, but bugs lay millions of eggs to compensate. Same goes for bacteria too. Lots of little critters eat bacteria, but bacteria just multiply so fast that there’s always plenty to go around for everyone.
Most species are just brute forcing it with numbers instead of skill or planning. So far, it has worked well, and slugs are just repeating a billion year old exploit. Slow breeding animals like superb owls, elephants and humans are the exception.
Yup, that’s pretty much what I figured.
They hide (eg under wood) and they lay lot of eggs.
fwiw, sea slugs are usually poisonous (and colorful)
Slugs in Surrey, England are filled with lung worm, so anything that eats them doesn’t fair too well …
they seem to just stay under things out of sight
They are about as nutritious and tasty as eating a booger.
Says a lot about birds that eat them
