Took this one near a waterfall off a service road at the base of Mt. Rainier.
Bonus Shots:
Lovely waterfall environment.
One thing to love about banana slugs: the name is a perfect description of the color (sometimes) and size. The picture doesn’t really put it completely into context, but these mofos are huge! They can grow up to 26 cm/10 inches long!
Also some of them have dark spots, just like an overripe banana!
(Not my photo sadly, as I’ve never seen a spotted one in the wild, but they’re out there!)
Very cool! Now I want to go back and see if I can find some variants!
I just read today they’re the second largest slug!
The largest is the Leopard slug, yeah? I saw one of them in Ireland a few years back and it had some really neat looking patterns.
Unfortunately you don’t have to go that far to find them; leopard slugs are among the invasive slugs taking over the PNW (I find them in my garden constantly). I will admit, though, that they are super cool, especially when they’re full grown. Watching them hunt is a hoot, like a slow-mo kaiju.
I wish I had put something down for scale! Cool to know they can get even bigger than this one (approx 15-17cm).
Kiss it for the street cred
Banana slugs are so cool! Unfortunately they’re being displaced by invasive European slugs. I hardly ever see bananas anymore…
I definitely saw a lot more of them when I was younger
This is the first one I’ve seen in the wild, and they are fascinating to watch! I probably spent an hour just following it around while it slimed along every surface in its path.
I didn’t realize they were being displaced…
That first picture makes it look enormous. We need a banana for scale. Very cool find BTW.
Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring,
Banana slug…Darn things ate my apples last year while they were still buds
woah, did you have a bunch of them swarming your trees?
Not swarming necessarily. Living in the forest so they’re just everywhere
Makes sense, these guys can really cover ground quicker than I would have guessed by looking at them. It would be interesting to set up a time laps to catch them hunting your apples.
By Jesus-Thor how big is that thing
I’d guess it was 15-17cm/ 6-7 in. Absolute unit of a molluscs!
Between 3 inches and 3 feet, but never more than 7 feet.
![Banana Slug, Washington USA [OC]](https://discuss.tchncs.de/pictrs/image/fc3bed36-58ee-459b-9113-9c355567341f.jpeg){kind=link}