#oral tentacles on slugs are used for this because obviously slugs are on the ground and all the easiest chemical tracing is going to be read | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gay-artificer · 1 year

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Slugcat ears aren’t ears to me theyre like rhinophores (but specialized in a good way for the open air) on a nudibranch (or the oral tentacles of land snails) and are entirely for highly specialized chemical sense. In a world constantly experience heavy washing in rain a lot of chemical information would be damaged routinely so I think they would just have insanely good chemical sense and it would be very robust in what it can cover.

#oral tentacles on slugs are used for this because obviously slugs are on the ground and all the easiest chemical tracing is going to be read #from the ground. its one of the reasons slime trails are so useful #but in ocean currents you arent gonna get things to stay on the ground very easily and sampling for compounds in the water column is easier #rain world obviously has a lot of rain so putting things along the ground is less usable. you'd want things to either be very resistant to #getting washed off or at least still traceable is you are using them to communicate #and if youre trying to find things youd need a very good set up in terms of tracking ability #so i think slugcats just have like incredibly good sense #on that front and can track a lot of things through different systems #the nose and 'ears' doing different things #and a lot of it is mostly meant to communicate to each other vs. other species #like being able to tell a shelter has been used...#anyway i actually dont know anything about chemical senses so grain of salt time but i want to believe #rw bioposting

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