Ruud Kleinpaste: Amazing slugs and snails in New Zealand

It might not be obvious in Aotearoa, but there’s something like 1400 different species of snails! They’re in many groups and with many different jobs to do, in the forests, in liquid habitats, on tree trunks, and in your garden. 

Native snails consume dead and decaying leaves, fungus, and algae (they don’t eat your veggie garden) and leave behind nutrient-rich poo for soil health. 

The Leaf-veined slug is one of those Molluscs that slithers around in the evening and at night. Their movement can be relatively smart, especially when they cruise on outdoor furniture or on leaves. Here they clean surfaces – literally! I’ve always called them the Wet & Forget slug, simply because they leave those clean tracks where-ever they went. 

Paryphanta the kauri snail. A serious native snail with almost 80 mm diameter shell. It occurs from Kaitaia to the southern parts of Northland. It’s even distributed to Titirangi and Laingholm, where I used to have it on our lawn, especially at night. I’ll never forget having to remove these massive snails before mowing the lawn! They are carnivorous: eating worms, insect larvae, and other snail species. The way they catch the worms is akin to sucking up spaghetti from the layers in the soil! 

Limax maximus (literally: “the largest slug”) also known as the leopard slug. Introduced into New Zealand and has a habit of getting inside our homes, especially when there’s a cat with milk in its bowl. The slurping by this slug can be heard by the neighbours! 

And here is one of those introduced snails that can cause a lot of damage to your garden: Cantareus Asperses, the Brown Garden Snail. It’s originally from Northern Africa and taken to France, a long, long time ago, it was introduced to NZ with European settlers. Troublesome eater of leaves etc in massive numbers; hiding under pots during the day and always more numerous than you think. 

One of the so-called “control” measures is spreading sharp chicken eggshells around the plants, so that the snails can’t walk over those sharp items. This picture shows one of those snails crossing over a brand-new, super sharp knife… 

One historical story is far more important than sharp knives: this snail species is one of the preferred snails that French people cultivate and use to create Escargot. Snail farming in New Zealand might not be a bad idea – it makes that protein a lot cheaper with the rising prices of our food! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks at B.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
And now Man in the Garden this Easter weekend. As
Rude climb pass. Good morning, Serve, A very good morning
to you. Jack. We always think of you as our
cultured European, so no doubt you're here talking es cargo
this morning. Yes, the Frenchman year, it's a dirego. Well no,
actually I started I started reading some of this literature,

(00:33):
you know, on all sorts of bits and pieces. And
when I read that we had fourteen hundred different species
of snails in o tro Yet, fourteen hundred different types,
that's amazing, amazing. Yeah, it's unbelievable. And and you know
they go, they're doing all sorts of stuff. They're going
to forests into liquid habitats and all that sort of

(00:54):
nonzes and three trunks and in your because they can
do quite a bit of damage. Actually yeah, but first
of all, let me talk about it. The native snails. First,
they are really not a big deal. They consume dead
and decaying leaves and all that sort of fungy and algae,
so they're not really yet worried about everything else. So

(01:15):
I thought let's talk about some of these fourteen hundred
species that I think are really cool. And the first
one is the leaf veined slug because it looks like
it has the veins of a leaf on the back.
You can see it quite.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Yeah, yeah, you've sent us to a photo. It does
look a bit like that.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
It's really nice and they go really quick, by the way.
But the best thing they do is they go outside
on your outdoor furniture and things like that and they
clean the surfaces.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Because they eat all of the algae and that kind
of stuff that gathers all that kind of musty stuff
on the furniture, right.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
You got it, And they leave trails. That's why I
always call them the wet and forget slug because it
looks like that. That's exactly what they do. It's really cool.
So you find them a lot if you go out
of site with a little torch of course. Yeah. So
that was number one. Number two Perry Fanta, which is
big bugger. That's the coldie snail, the largest one we've got,

(02:10):
about eighty millimeters diameter. It occurs all the way from
Kaitaia down to north of Auckland. But then again I
remember that. When I lived in Titirangi or in Langholm rather,
I used to have them literally in my garden right
and every evening or afternoon when I do the mowing
of the lawn, I had to take them away from

(02:31):
the lawn otherwise they would die. The poor things. There,
really beautiful things. But here comes the nicest thing. They
eat worms, and they do that by having their body
going over the soil, if you like, and if they
find a hole with the worm and they go and
they suck the whole worm up as if it costs nothing.

(02:54):
It is really amazed through the hole like spaghetti. Yeah,
do you know how you get once there? You go? Yes, yes,
that's a great there's limits. You can see that at
night when you've got them in Northland. Just just have
a look at it. It is fabulous. That is That
is my second wonderful one. Then the third one I've

(03:16):
got jack is Limax maximus, which literally means the largest slug.
I don't I think it's an introduced one, but it's
a really nice one. But here comes here comes the thing.
When you've got cats, for instance, these things go under
the door and they find the milk and then they
go and it wakes up everybody, including neighbors. It's brill

(03:39):
you the slurp stuff up. It's wonderful, it's good, amazing.
Is the last one is the one? The last one
is the one you already alluded to. This the one
that is about having escago. It's Contarius aspersus. It's the
brown garden snail. Originally it came from Africa. The French

(03:59):
put it into France. They decided that is good eating,
and that is now in France one of the two
major ones that they eat esc I go, So what
do we have to do without the people in New Zealand,
get them, cook them and use them as escago. We
instead of poisoning them and doing all this stupid stuff,
why don't we start a real esc igo team here

(04:23):
in New Zealand.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
I love it. I'm into it. I mean we might
have to ramp up production.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
The problem with your risk cargo is you need you need.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
To fear them out to have a full meal, don't you.
But no, I'm into it. Road.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
I think that could It could be a dragon's den
million dollar idea.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
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