Slugs are easy to hate. They work under the cover of night in your vegetable garden or your hosta patch to wreak their special kind of havoc. Slugs aren't always a big problem in Iowa. During drought years they almost disappear from sight. Prolonged periods of wet weather, however, have the opposite affect and numbers become noticeable.
Slugs are snails without the spiral shell.
When stretched out, the average Iowa garden slug will be up to 1 inch in length. Slugs are animals on a very large branch of the Animal Kingdom family tree called Mollusca. The best known molluscs are the clams and oysters, squids and octopuses, and snails and slugs. A majority of gastropods live in the ocean and include many of the decorative seashells found along the beach. The large fleshy foot that protrudes from the shell of a snail or oyster and on which they crawl, also contains the mouth opening.