Slugs
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40 free Slugs trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Slugs get little love, yet they are some of the oddest animals in any garden. They glide on a film of slime, sense the world through stalks that fold away, and have relatives in the ocean that look as if they were drawn for a cartoon. This quiz puts the best fun facts about slugs to the test. It covers how a slug's body works, what it eats and what eats it, the record-holders and rarities among land slugs, the dazzling sea slugs, and the places slugs turn up in laboratories, in language and at the movies. It is pitched for curious readers of any age, gardeners included, with easy openers and tougher questions for nature buffs. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing why as well as what.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which big cat names the great grey slug, which mates dangling in mid-air from a mucus thread?
Leopard
Leopard slug is the common name of Limax maximus, a spotted species whose Latin name simply means 'biggest slug', though one relative grows even larger.
Q 02Slug blood carries oxygen using haemocyanin, a protein built around which metal instead of iron?
Copper
Copper sits at the heart of haemocyanin, which turns blue when it picks up oxygen and is colourless without it.
Q 03The sea slug Elysia chlorotica steals parts of the algae it eats to carry out which plant process?
Photosynthesis
Photosynthesis can carry on inside the slug for up to ten months, because it stores the algae's green chloroplasts in the cells of its own gut.
Q 04The sea slug Elysia marginata can shed its entire body and then regrow it from which surviving part?
Its head
Its head separates over several hours and then grows a whole new body, heart included, which may be a drastic way of getting rid of parasites.
Q 05Which slug-like Star Wars crime lord puts the frozen Han Solo on display in his palace?
Jabba the Hutt
Jabba the Hutt took shape as the first film's script was finished, when George Lucas settled on a fat, slug-like creature with a gaping mouth and eyes on feelers.
Q 06Which drink do gardeners pour into small traps as a traditional way of catching slugs?
Beer
Beer traps are a classic home remedy, though like crushed eggshells and coffee grounds they only really help in a small garden.
Q 07The blue dragon sea slug eats which venomous drifting animal and stores its stinging cells?
Portuguese man o' war
Portuguese man o' war stings are kept in the slug's own tissues as a defence, so anyone who picks up a blue dragon can get a very painful sting.
Q 08Centuries before it named a shell-less animal, the English word slug was an insult aimed at whom?
A lazy person
A lazy person was a slug in medieval English, and the slow-moving animal only picked up the name in the early 1700s.
Q 09Harvard engineers copied the defensive mucus of the dusky arion slug to make which medical product?
Surgical adhesive
Surgical adhesive modelled on the slime sticks to wet tissue and can hold on to a beating heart; the slug uses its mucus to anchor itself when a predator tries to pry it loose.
Q 10In 2024 the bright yellow banana slug was named the official state slug of which US state?
California
California made it official when Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill in September 2024; banana slugs live on the floor of its damp coastal redwood forests.
Q 11Salt kills a slug by drawing the water out of its body through which process?
Osmosis
Osmosis is deadly to an animal that is mostly water, but farmers never use the trick, because salty soil would harm their crops as well.
Q 12What does a land slug use the single round hole on the right side of its body for?
Breathing
Breathing happens through this one pore, the pneumostome, which opens and closes to let air into the slug's single lung.
Q 13A slug feeds with a radula, a ribbon often compared to a tongue and covered in rows of tiny what?
Teeth
Teeth made of tough chitin cover the radula, which scrapes or cuts food before it is swallowed; hunting slugs have razor-sharp ones for seizing prey.
Q 21Eric Kandel won a Nobel Prize for using the sea slug Aplysia to show how nerve cells store what?
Memories
Memories could be traced in Aplysia because it has only about 20,000 nerve cells, which made its simple kinds of learning far easier to follow.
Q 22The ghost slug's species name, ysbryda, comes from the word for ghost in which language?
Welsh
Welsh supplied ysbryd, meaning ghost, for a white, eyeless slug that burrows deep underground and was named in 2008 by scientists from Wales's national museum and Cardiff University.
Q 23Shelled slugs of the genus Testacella live underground in rich soil, where they hunt which animals?
Earthworms
Earthworms are their prey, and these rarely seen hunters still carry a very small shell, set far back on the body.
Q 14Slugs and snails make up the gastropods, the second-largest class of animals after which group?
Insects
Insects are the only class with more species; the gastropods have an estimated 65,000 to 80,000 living ones.
Q 15Every slug has both male and female reproductive organs, which makes it what kind of animal?
Hermaphrodite
A hermaphrodite slug still looks for company: two slugs circle each other and both pass sperm to the other.
Q 16A land slug's upper tentacles carry its eyespots, but which sense does the lower pair provide?
Smell
Smell is the job of the lower pair, and in most land slugs all four tentacles can be pulled back inside the body out of harm's way.
Q 17Foxes and badgers both eat slugs, and so does which small spiny mammal that forages at night?
Hedgehog
Hedgehog diets include slugs, and so do those of toads, blackbirds, starlings and even brown trout: almost every major group of vertebrates has its slug-eaters.
Q 18Most slugs keep a remnant of a shell hidden inside the body, mainly as a store of which mineral?
Calcium
Calcium salts are banked in the leftover shell, and Pliny the Elder already knew that the great grey slug carried one under its skin.
Q 19When threatened, the sea hare, a large and bulky sea slug, squirts out a cloud of which liquid?
Ink
Ink from a sea hare may be white, purple or red, depending on the seaweed it has been eating, and it dulls a predator's senses.
Q 20The fluffy-looking sea slug nicknamed the sea bunny became an online hit in 2015 in which country?
Japan
Japan fell for the sea bunny on Twitter thanks to its rabbit-like look; the 'fur' is really a coat of tiny fleshy bumps the slug uses to sense its surroundings.
Q 24Arion vulgaris, an invasive slug spreading widely since the 1950s, has which word in its nickname?
Killer
Killer slug is the popular name for this large slug, which can gather in such numbers that it becomes a serious problem for farms and gardens.
Q 25Which large, colourful sea slug flees danger by unfolding its body edges and swimming off with rippling movements?
Spanish dancer
Spanish dancer nudibranchs take their name from this escape swim, and they can grow to 25 centimetres long.
Q 26Nudibranchs are colourful sea slugs whose name joins Latin and Greek words meaning naked what?
Gills
Gills are worn on the outside by many nudibranchs, as feathery plumes arranged in a rosette on the back.
Q 27Most slugs cling on when attacked, but what does the spotted Kerry slug of Ireland do instead?
Rolls into a ball
Rolls into a ball: the Kerry slug lets go of its rock or tree trunk and curls up completely, a defence found in no other member of its family.
Q 28Certain slugs can escape a predator's grip by shedding which bit of the body?
Part of the tail
Part of the tail can be cast off, as some lizards do; the trick, called autotomy, leaves the predator holding a scrap while the rest of the slug gets away.
Q 29Eating a raw slug can pass on rat lungworm, a parasite that causes which serious illness in people?
Meningitis
Meningitis from rat lungworm is rare in people, but slugs and snails carry the parasite's larvae, so badly washed lettuce is a risk too.
Q 30A slug's slime trail does more than ease its way: it also helps other slugs of its species do what?
Find a partner
Find a partner: a slug can tell that a trail was laid by its own species and follow it, and some meat-eating slugs track their prey the same way.