a warning: I meant this to just be a post about the mouth thing, but then it kind of spiraled out of control. it’s kind of disorganized. sorry. I swear I was dead sober when I wrote this.

eric sent me this to illustrate some of the odd animals in ‘naruto’:

yes, that is a person riding a giant slug*. but forget about that for now! the more important issue (at least, for me when I first saw this) is: what is up with that mouth?! is that what a slug’s mouth really looks like? like…like…a weird puckery anus-looking thing?? I was horrified and curious. so I did some googling (p.s. do not, I repeat do NOT google ‘slug mouth’. you will get some urban dictionary results that will not make you happy) and found out that yes, it is basically what a slug mouth looks like.

crazy right?** more or less just as ‘naruto’ depicts it. but then of course this led to more googling and eric found this account from someone at UCSB (their official mascot: the banana slug) who rescues banana slugs from the sidewalks. s/he also says:

Banana slugs will also try to “taste” you with their mouth parts. They feel rough, like tiny slimy kitten tongues.

!!!! TINY SLIMY KITTEN TONGUES!!! who knew slug radula could be so delightful? please note the illustration*** on the wiki page of a snail using its radula, which strikes me as hilarious and I’m not sure why:

there is also a link in those aforementioned reddit comments to info about the pacific northwest tree octopus (which is a hoax):

shhhh he’s sleeping!**** (also I suggest you read down to the totally adorable comments about snails) this of course led eric to bring up the house hippo, which I desperately want. peanut butter tracks!

here’s another from the vintage commercial vault. kind of cute, kind of a few steps away from something from a nightmare. eric rightly states, “they shouldn’t be fuzzy like that”.

* OH MY GOD look at what that slug does.

** I enjoy how in that slug mouth caption, the author cavalierly suggests murdering the slug, then closes with ‘blessings’. …and by ‘enjoy’ I mean ‘boil with rage’.

*** another fun illustration by the same artist. he’s smiling!

**** sorry, this was a google image link; I don’t have a link back to the source page with the photographer info.