Watch a slug use a thin thread of slime as a slide to reach the ground

By Jake Buehler

Slugs are generally content to lazily munch garden greens, but one of these lethargic molluscs has recently been spotted taking to the air, descending vertically down a string of slime like a spider dangling from a line of silk.

The discovery represents a new type of locomotion never seen before in slugs.

John Gould, an ecologist at the University of Newcastle in Australia, was conducting fieldwork on frogs on Kooragang Island, New South Wales, when he found a striped field slug (Lehmannia nyctelia) …