This insect has all features of a snail expect a protective shell. We found it crawling out during the nights. I found a couple hiding underneath a brick in my garden. Each was about 3 inches long and was leaving behind a silvery trail.
I shot this in South India about 5 weeks ago during the rainy season. Can someone ID this one?
Cheers
deadmanswill
here's another shot of it.
that is a slug
It does indeed look like a Shell-less snail, I have found an orange one, this one is the same colour as yours but no other name given.
http://nslovesugarcubes.blogspot.com/2008/05/tennis-last-sat.html
I had to post quickly, a thunderstorm cut me off soon after!
Looking around, most shell-less snails appear to be water dwellers. There is one type I found called Amphibulimid snails, others appearing to be shell-less usually have some sort of thickening where the shell should be.
http://www.kingsnake.com/westindian/metazoa1.html
The shell-less sea snails seem to be very colourful,
http://visualstreak.com/2008/07/18/nudibranchs-colourful-shell-less-sea-snails/
Definitely a slug of some sort.
It looks very like the Red Triangle Slug (Triboniophorus graeffei): http://davesgarden.com/guides/bf/go/4960/
but that slug is an Australian species and I do not know if it is also found in India,
Kennedy
Thanks very much for the info. I too looked around and came across one species called Leatherleaf slugs. Though they looked very similar to the kind I posted here, I did not see India mentioned in its distribution.
I will leave the post open for a couple more days. Somebody may give a positive ID, but I am bit skeptic. Not much is known about the species of the Indian subcontinent and there seems to be no Indian forum or site online to get these species identified.
Thanks once more.
Cheers
deadmanswill
http://grasslords.blogspot.com
...wildlife in my garden...
Hi,
I've posted this image in my blog. Thanks for all your replies.
You can check out the post at http://grasslords.blogspot.com/2008/09/shell-less-snail-slug.html
cheers
deadmanswill
