Slug sex

I've got quite a few blogs in my head, and I'm never sure whether to put them all down at once or just a few at a time. We'll see how it goes.

So did anyone see that new bbc documentry on invertebrates called life in the undergrowth, it was absolutely fascinating. I must admit, I'm not the biggest admirer of things without a backbone, especially if they come crawling anywhere near me. However, the photography in the programme was outstanding, some of the places they film is incredible, crisp images of insects smaller than a millimetre in length, slow motion film so slow you can see the beating of a flies wing - incredible.

The most memorable part of this weeks episode was the film of two leaopard slugs having sex, you could not imagine anything so peculiar. I'm not sure if this is how your common garden slug gets it on, but here's some screen captures.

Firstly they dangle on some slime from an overhang, intertwining before getting down to business. Now slugs are hermaphrodites, and firstly they get out their male organs from the side of their head!! And relatively speaking they are gigantic. These white organs then intertwine themselves, forming a bulb shaped object that fans out into this flower structure and it is at this stage that sperm are swapped.

Have you ever seen anaything like this: