Public reproduction is freaky
So, last night, I'm walking around, and I see a peculiar sight. Two slugs - and these are the archetypal Britissh Columbia slugs; seven inces long, dark brown and grey, and bloated - are intertwined with one another, hanging from a chord of white slime which is itself about a foot and a half long, connected at the top to an overhang of brick jutting from a wall.
Fascinated, I lean in closer. I'd never seen slugs doing this before. I inferred that they were mating, and, being the huge letch that I am and wanting something to beat off to later, I wanted a closer look. What I saw next may put me off mollussc erotica forever.
I note that one of them has a little white mass on the side of its head. I figure it's a little lump of the same stuff that chord was made of. Not so. For as I watch, it grows. And wriggles.
So now I'm thinking, "maybe I've got this whole slug reproduction thing mixed up. Maybe it's giving birth. That looks to me llke a tiny white slug coming out the side of its head". But only mammals give live birth, right? As I watch, a second, similarly wriggling translucent white tendril of slugflesh begins to emerge from the side of the head of the other slug. Now, this has really got me thinking. I mean, why would two interlocking slugs be giving birth at the same time? *** Entranced, I continue to watch, as these two ... tentacle things ooze their way about two to three inches out the aides of the heads of both slugs, and flail around a bit, before they find each other.
So, I keep watching, and as the two of them ball up, I see them tapering off towards the bodies of the... parents? I don't know. It looks like they're about to come out entirely. I think the tapering bits are just where the tails of the infants are tapering off. I'm still not clear as to what I'm seeing at this point.
A couple of minutes pass, and the ball of two white-translucent-tentacle maybe-baby-slug-monster-things write against one another, flaring out at odd points. Finally, the two slugs become more vigorous, and swiftly retract what I have now decided must be their unspeakably alien genitalia back into their heads. Their work complete, they then detatch from the chord they've been hanging from all this time, and slither away.
Slugs are wierd. I mean, I know that they're animals, and we're animals, and that lots of different animals reproduce in lots of different ways. But for fuck's sakes. That's just a really, really different approach there. I can accept fish just sort of spraying of genetic information at one another that fish do. I can accept the embarassment to mammal-kind which is the marsupial pouch. But this? This is a translucent white tentacle coming out the side of your fucking head. That's the most crazy-japan method of reproductin I've ever borne witness to in my fucking life.
And you know what else I've discovered? Okay, I knew that slugs are hermaphrodites. No surprise there. But apparently, some species of slugs will, during this process, BITE THE OTHER ONE'S TENTACLE-GENITAL OFF DURING SEX, AND THUS MAKE IT BY DEFAULT FEMALE! For fucksakes!
So here's what I propose: What we need to do is create a new kingdom of life, aside from plants, animals, fungi and such, JUST for slugs. That way they won't be a part of the same kingdom as I am. Do I hear any support out there?
I mean... white tentacle...!