Sunday 30 November 2014

Sunday 30th November - who's been eating this car?

Spotted a car with these patterns in the dirt on the bonnet (hood) when out and about today:




The surface of the car seemed to be covered with sort of lichen, or maybe algae, as though the car spends a lot of time parked under a tree or in a shady, damp place. The little triangular marks were so unexpected. I have never seen tracks like these before.

So I started googling when I got home. Lo and behold, a grazing pattern for a snail:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/coshipi/8728080092/
Now read this and be afraid. 

Most land snails eat plants and other vegetation.
Snails also eat algae and decaying matter and are an important part of the food web. 
A garden snail has thousands of tiny teeth.
These thousands of tiny teeth are located on a ribbon like tongue and work like a file and rip the food to bits. 
Snails can gnaw through limestone.They eat the little bits of chalk in the rock which they need for their shells.
Some varieties of snails can destroy whole orchards and gardens when there are large groups of them.  http://www.zephyrus.co.uk/howsnailsfeed.html

I stopped the copy and paste here; it was bad enough reading how snails can destroy whole gardens. I hadn't ever considered the idea of CANIVEROUS snails.

This youtube video perfectly explains the side-to-side meanderings of the "tooth" marks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jD-qldrUiI

I have increased the sum of my knowledge by another small increment.

And maybe yours, too.






1 comment:

  1. I believe you defends against them with a mixture of le garlic et la Guerrero ��

    ReplyDelete