Australia is home to some of the most strange-looking slugs on Earth! Some slugs are even fluorescent.
This species of fluorescent slug is only found in a small Australian habitat.
It has survived bushfires.
It is a born survivor!
These slugs live on an extinct volcano in Australia.
It was feared they had been wiped out by bushfires.
But the unique species survived.
The key reason they’re seen as important is
because they occur nowhere else in
the world.
They are only found in
Mount Kaputar National Park
and a couple of
surrounding high peaks.
The slugs have a very small range
of about ten square kilometers.
So, large fires appear,
as we have seen this year in particular…
have the potential to wipe out whole species.
We haven’t seen a fire up there for a while
and we weren’t sure how they were gonna cope.
Some of the fires started, actually,
right up on the peak of the mountain,
and then burn through the habitat
where you see the slugs most commonly.
About 60 slugs were spotted by rangers after recent rainfall.
Seeing the slugs recently allows us to know
that they’ve survived through one of their
means of getting out of the way.
They actually retract into crevices
and under bark, and even into the ground
in big logs of rotten wood
as soon as the weather becomes dry and hot.
So they would have been hiding already from the drought
that has preceded the fires.
And if the fires hadn’t been intense enough to
really go into their hiding places
then they are fine.
Mount Kaputar National Park will reopen in late February.
The best time to see them is when it’s
been moist on the mountains so you can be
up there and go for a visit.
On a beautiful sunny day, you won’t see them.
When it’s foggy on top, particularly,
or when it’s been raining, the slugs will be out.
And when they do come out in large numbers
it’s amazing to see.
VOCABULARY
born [bɔːn] прирождённый, от глагола to bear (bore – born) рождать, давать жизнь
slug [slʌg] слизень, слизняк; “тихоход”; лентяй
snail [sneɪl] улитка; тихоход; медлительный человек, лежебока, лентяй
survivor [sə’vaɪvə] тот, кто преодолевает любые трудности и остаётся в живых
fluorescent [flɔː’res(ə)nt]/[fluə’res(ə)nt]/[flə’res(ə)nt] флуоресцентный, флюоресцирующий
The video is also here
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