Talk:Banana slug

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Banana slug article.
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[edit] Regarding the Cleanup Notice

I'm not exactly sure what should be cleaned up. Maybe the article needs to be reorganized? — Ambush Commander(Talk) 22:09, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rethinking

Looking over the article again, I see what you mean. At the time I saw a lot of room for improvement in the writing; I can't dispute its factuality. I'll happily remove the {{cleanup}}. I still think the syntax and grammar needs some help, but it's certainly not dire. Ringbang 22:15, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Semantic Mapping

This is an effort to see how we should move parts of this article around. First, we figure out what we have to work with.

  • Leading Paragraph
    • Species — The banana slug is a mollusk of the genus Ariolimax.
    • Size — second-largest species of slug in the world, growing up to 25cm (9.8 inches) long
    • Appearance — Their bodies is usually bright yellow (somewhat resembling a banana); however, the may also be green, brown, or white.
    • Extra blurb about color — Their color changes based on light exposure, food intake, and moisture.
  • Lungs and Location
  • Decomposer/Food preferences + a blurb about how slugs are slow
  • Tentacles
  • Slime
  • Slime as protection from predators
  • Predators of banana slugs
  • Slime as help for transportation, and slime as glue
  • Dormancy during dry periods (slime related)
  • Mating and Reproduction
  • Mascot Blurb

Now... how to reorganize... — Ambush Commander(Talk) 21:52, August 6, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reorganization

Maybe something like...

  • Intro with taxonomic info
  • Decomposer/Food preferences
  • Physiology
    • Appearance (including color) and Size
    • Lungs and Location
    • Tentacles
    • Slime-related sections (or Slime Talk with your host, Sluggy)
    • Mating and Reproduction (or top-level section?)
  • Mascot Blurb

?

Ringbang 16:09, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I think the taxonomic info should stay mostly in the TaxoBox and not really get its own section. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 22:29, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
Ah, I wasn't proposing to add info from the TaxoBox to the prose, just to retain what taxonomic info appears in the prose already. But in that event we're really only talking about citing the genus and the common name of the phylum in the intro paragraph, and looking at the context I only see a need to retain the latter. — Ringbang 23:55, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] dolichophallus

I got the information on the dolichophallus from the slug article. - Corby 21:21, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mascot info

User:169.233.29.164 has once again deleted the snippet about the banana slug being the mascot for the University of California, Santa Cruz. I have dropped a note on the IP's talk page. It is somewhat perplexing... I thought it was a quite interesting, albeit a bit eccentric, piece of trivia. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 21:43, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Size comparisons

"the largest slug is Limax cinereoniger [Ash-grey slug] of Europe, which can reach 30 cm (12 inches) in length" I doubt this is correct as the vast majority of sources place the maximum at 15–20 cm (6–8 in) for this species: 30 cm would be 50–100 % longer and a projected 237.5–700 % heavier. Also, the Great grey slug L. maximus is of similar size, possibly larger. And the Banana slug is apparently bigger than either of the two. --Anshelm '77 21:23, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] . . . . . .???. . . . . . .

"When the slime comes into contact with a moist surface, it produces an anesthetic which causes the membranes to go numb."

The predator's lips for example?

[edit] Dolichophallus revisited

Has anyone actually verified the supposed source of the species Ariolimax dolichophallus (Mead, 1943)? Given that the Latin translates to "long penis", I'm rather suspicious of this supposed variant. The only place I've ever seen the phrase used to refer to a banana slug was on a tag for clothing bearing a UC Santa Cruz logo. I suspect that the clothing manufacturer was having a little fun with us. --GentlemanGhost (talk) 00:45, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, I may have discovered my own reference for it, thanks to the archives of the talk page for the UCSC article. [1] However, I still can't help but wonder if this reference's author might have been fooled as well. --GentlemanGhost (talk) 01:03, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Hmmm... I found another reference. [2] Perhaps what I always assumed was a joke actually wasn't after all. Still, it would be nice to see a reference to a peer-reviewed source. "Mead, 1943" doesn't provide much context. --GentlemanGhost (talk) 01:38, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Wow. I finally found the source. [3] I've added a link to this (the original Mead article on JSTOR) within the Wikipedia article. All this time, I thought it was a joke, but this slug really is named for, as Mead puts it, its "most characteristic feature". --GentlemanGhost (talk) 02:17, 29 February 2008 (UTC)