What happened with the salty slug-maze

In case you're wondering what happened with the salt-maze that killed stupid slugs and rewarded the clever with jam, here is an update.

So my friend HAD a problem with slugs. I think he did it right. (imgur.com)

• [silkox]

  That is, perhaps s/he was going straight for the jam.

• [Yep]

  New problem. Luckily, I know what to use to get a slug guts stain out of carpet. Cockroaches.

  • [nox]

    Salted slugs barely come out of asphalt.

    Poor landlord. 

    • [August]

       Doesn’t Hydrogen Peroxide work?  I know it works on squished mousey fluids, why not slug slime?

• [Ladyfingers]

  There’s only one sensible response: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2etnJW0NxjE

  • [laurent]

    Chris Knox “Lament Of The Gastropod”

    http://www.chrisknox.co.nz/muscol/K/Chris-Knox/Songs-Of-You-Me/Lament-Of-The-Gastropod.html

    • [Chuck]

       I’d say now is a good time for the Dance of the Salted Slug…

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcz4fB2xDl0

• [Drinking the well]

  Would love to make a ‘snailed it!’ pun, but we have to wait until the overlord arrives. :(

  • [irksome]

    Or a “Slug A-Salted” headline.

    “the horror… the horror…” 

• [SomeGuyNamedMark]

  He should’ve used a power-up.

• [awjt]

  Slugs are amazingly stupid… wouldn’t you retreat at the very first errant hot coal underfoot, rather than tramping your entire body into the big burning pile???

  • [daneyul]

     Momentum.

  • [fredh]

    “Wouldn’t you retreat at the very first errant hot coal underfoot, rather than tramping your entire body into the big burning pile???”                                                 But the jam! Think of the sweet, sweet, slather over your radula, jam! The colorfull, candy-like, as seen through your eye stalks, jam! Show me the slug who can resist moving his foot at breakneck speed toward that!

  • [lava]

    This slug was a member of Rouge Squadron – his last words were “I’ve got a problem here, I can hold it, No, I’m all right – AIEEEE!”

    That sequence was about 5 minutes though.

  • [bluest_one]

    Terrorists use their most stupid and gullible recruits for penetration testing.

    Somewhere under a rock, Osama Slug Laden (all slugs have “slug” as their middle name) is formulating a plan involving hijacking a sparrow and crashing it into those salt and pepper grinders on this guy’s kitchen table.

  • [robdobbs]

    Snails apparently have a reality slice of about 5 seconds. From his perspective, he was suddenly lit afire from below – unable to retreat fast enough.

• [MikeKStar]

  Wilhelm Scream!

  http://wilhelmscream.net/

• [Keith Tyler]

  The obvious line of attack is to aim for the far left, where there is only one line, send out one or two pawns to cross the line, once you get the pawns to die on the salt line, crawl right over them. Huzzah!

• [irksome]

  A slug is a-salted on the street by two snails. The police ask him to describe his assailants but all the slug can say is “It all happened so fast…”.

• [elk]

  My fiance has an obvious regard for all critters big and small, particularly when it comes to senseless death in sport or everyday inconvenience (an annoying fly, etc), and without coming across as a misguided or naive nut job. Exceptions when critters needs to be “fended off”. So why should you give a crap about a faceless slug? Figure it out for yourself.

  • [chenille]

    Though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, yet the frogs do not die in sport but in earnest. – Plutarch, attributed to Bion

• [Spitty Sumo]

  this is horrible.  why would someone find it entertaining to subject an innocent living thing to pain and death?  and why the hell does anyone find it funny to read about?  would you be amused if he had a problem with the neighbor’s cats/dogs coming onto his lawn, put steel traps out there as a deterrent, and took pictures of the resulting critter whose leg had been mauled by it?  just because you think an animal is stupid, slow, or whatever, doesn’t make it any less alive, and just because you can’t relate to an animal, doesn’t make its suffering any less real.

  • [Gyrofrog]

     You’re right! From now on I’ll bring all unwanted invertebrates to your house for proper TLC.

    • [Spitty Sumo]

      or you could PUT THEM OUTSIDE.  or, i dunno, invest in some new weatherstripping.  or you could keep on being snarky, that might help.

      • [awjt]

        Some people prefer to eliminate pestilence as a way to maintain cleanliness and health.  I’m sure all but the most brutal would draw the line well in advance of other people’s pets.  You have the right to disagree.  Sometimes I take spiders outside, sometimes I squish em.  Depends on how I feel about the situation.

      • [Gyrofrog]

        ??? They came from outside. That just pushes the problem 10 or 12 hours into the future.

        Weatherstripping? Bah! Wouldn’t stop ‘em. As far as I’ve been able to tell, they can osmose themselves into a room.

        • [Spitty Sumo]

          ok, i admit that “they can osmose themselves into a room” paints a pretty amusing picture.  makes me think of how octopods can “ooze” into any space that their beak can fit through.

• [Gypsy Jim]

  We have a similar slug problem by the back door, next to our kitchen, but ongoing research into the subject has lead me to believe that porridge oats are a better alternative to salt, especially as the slug corpses aren’t subsequently toxic to birds or hedgehogs… Fingers crossed!

• [tominvan]

  I find this whole thing quite interesting as a psychological study. I invite you to join me in considering your own emotional reactions to 3 possible salt barriers one could hypothetically lay out for slugs trying to enter your house.

  Configuration A consists of a simple salt barrier, as follows:

  |******************|

  Configuration B, consists of a simple barrier with one possible escape hatch, as follows:

  |******   ****************|

  Configuration C consists of a salt maze like the one in the post (I won’t bother with the ascii art).

  If the post consisted of Configuration A, we wouldn’t be having any discussion at all because very few people would find it disturbing in any way. We would perceive a straightforward protective barrier that you might find in any garden around the world. We’d say to ourselves, hey, the slug doesn’t have to come near my cabbage, and if he’s stupid enough to plow headlong into a purely defensive salt barrier to steal _my_ veggies, that’s his own bloody fault and I can hardly be held accountable.

  I would venture that the average reader, myself included, may find configuration B mildly more disturbing than A, despite the fact that it gives the slug a really good chance of survival. Why would it bug us? Because it seems like a game to us. That we’re toying with the slug for our own amusement.

  Similarly, we find Configuration C far more disturbing than either A or B because although it purports to give the slug a chance of survival, in reality we know that no slug has a hope in hell of successfully navigating a maze. From our perspective, this is way, way, way worse than Configuration B, because not only have we turned a life and death struggle into a game, but we have done so in a way that manipulates the slug’s hopes and fears. One could imagine the mazekeeper drywashing his hands and laughing maniacally at the slug’s pathetically fruitless struggles, revelling in his own obviously superior intellect. To take such pleasure at the expense of another being strikes us as obviously sadistic.

  However, logically we must deduce the following conclusions:
    1. We find Configuration B mildly more disturbing than A, despite the fact that from the slug’s perspective, B is actually a much better bet than A.
    2. We find Configuration C FAR more disturbing than A, despite the fact that from the slug’s perspective they have the same chance of survival.

  These are clearly irrational positions, so why do we hold them? Because amongst humans, we find the idea of being toyed with EXTREMELY disturbing due to our particular psychology. We’re constantly on the watch against sadistic little pricks who might play these kinds of games with us. We’ve all seen the Saw movies, right?

  We have, yes, but the slugs haven’t. They have no particular baggage regarding social hierarchies or sadism. The slug cares about two things: 1. eating jam, and 2. not getting burnt by salt.

  The TLDR: I think this post and our response to it is a fantastic illustration of the human tendency towards anthropomorphism. If you have a problem with using salt to kill slugs generally, then fair enough, but otherwise I seriously doubt that the slugs give a damn how we lay the salt out. 

  • [Spitty Sumo]

    i have a problem with salting slugs generally, but i have an even greater problem with people who obviously get a sadistic kick out of doing so, even going so far as to bait the slugs.  i don’t think it’s anthropomorphism to acknowledge the suffering of another living things.

  • [awjt]

    Try to take the slug’s perspective.  From the slug’s perspective, A would be indistinguishable from C.  B would be different because a gap is clearly possible to be seen if the slug could move along parallel to the salt mound. But A and C are essentially synonymous.

    However, and here is where the debate gets interesting.  I am not fully convinced that a salted slug is “suffering.”  Not anymore so than a nematode who moves from a zone with one pH to a zone with a markedly different pH.

    How do you define suffering, from a slug’s perspective?

    I can’t.  Can you?

    • [Spitty Sumo]

      i can’t define it, but that doesn’t make it correct to deny it.

      when a slug touches salt, the salt draws the moisture out of the slug’s body through its skin.  the slug writhes and exudes lots of slime.  i can’t presume to understand what the slug feels exactly, but one logical conclusion would be that the presence of salt against its body is a negative stimulus, and the writhing and oozing is an attempt to relieve said stimulus.  the slug eventually dies of dehydration and/or tissue damage, which, in animals that we acknowledge to experience pain (because they are more like us), we know is more than just a little uncomfortable.

      why would you think the slug responds the way that it does?  i sure as shit don’t think it’s doing an oozy dance of joy.

      • [awjt]

        I honestly don’t know.  That sounds reasonable.  But I could imagine that the writhing is NOT an attempt at either relief OR joy, but  simply what happens to those cells when they are in that new environment.  A clear response is not always possible to discern – things are complicated.  Maybe it’s not even a “response,” and just a physical “reaction” to the stimulus.  It totally depends on how you define response.  Assuming the picture is unaltered, the slug had most of itself on the carpet still and not on the salt.  So a “response” that seems reasonable to me is full retreat to non-salt area.  Yet the slug persisted, for unknown reasons (momentum? LOL like the best comment on the thread suggests.)

        My point is that when you start peeling back the layers on our perceptions, things get complicated fast and while a moral stand is admirable, it doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny.

        I also hold your belief not to harm anything needlessly.  Keeping in mind that my needs and other people’s needs are different, that society has standards for where the lines are on killing things, and that situations are complicated and can change at a moment’s notice.  But there you have it.  My treatise on how it’s undiscernible if a salted slug is actually suffering or not.

        • [chenille]

          Why would you imagine there are lines? A slug’s reaction to its slow demise is less like ours than a dog’s or a fish’s, but much more than an amoeba’s or plant’s. They’re all varying degrees of elaboration on the same theme, though.

          Anyway, if Spitty Sumo is anthropomorphizing, it’s at least in a way that impresses with its humanity. Looking at this as a way to recreate Running Man with mollusks, not so much.

        • [awjt]

          reply to chenille: the line between killing a dog attacking you, and just a dog you don’t like.  That line.  The same line that is blurry to some people in the Trayvon Martin case, and crystal clear to others in 2 completely different ways.  That line.  Clear as mud?  :)

  • [lava]

    Hey, did y’all see that youtube video of the squirrel sling-shot?

• [Spitty Sumo]

  the slug equivalent of unicorn chasers… first, my favorite slug image ever:

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/j-fish/4452939261

  sir david attenborough and slugs:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhVi4Z6CjZk

  • [jfish]

    Thanks for the compliment, I’m honored one of my images could qualify as your “favorite ever” in any category… even just slugs
    Don’t forget I have many images of these amazing creatures:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/j-fish/sets/72157604938493715/ 

• [mikeartist]

  As kids we use to put a ring of salt around the slugs…2 slugs enter no slug leaves the circle of doom.

• [chupsahey]

  Do slugs even like jam?

• [Summer Seale]

  I say salt’em all, and let sluglord sort’em out.

• [mrcanoehead]

  Get those motherloving slugs off my motherloving rug!

• [timmaguire]

  Advanced scouting parties. The real assault comes before dawn.