Many gardeners resort to putting salt on slugs to get rid of these common garden pests, but is this cruel to the slugs? If you’re wondering whether or not salting slugs is inhumane, read on.
If you’re short on time, here’s the quick answer: Putting salt on slugs does cause them pain and distress before they die, so most experts say it’s more humane to use other methods to control slug populations in gardens.
What Happens When You Put Salt on Slugs?
Putting salt on slugs may seem like a harmless prank, but it actually causes significant pain and suffering. Here’s an overview of the damaging effects of salting slugs.
The salt draws moisture out of their bodies
Slugs have very permeable skin, which allows their bodies to retain moisture. When salt is applied, it creates a hypertonic environment, drawing water out of the slug’s cells via osmosis. This leads to rapid dehydration, shriveling, and membrane damage.
The salt burns exposed tissues
In addition to dehydration, the salt interacts chemically with the slug’s body fluids creating a burning sensation. Salt crystals may also physically scratch and damage the skin, causing wounds that further expose tissues.
Researchers have compared slug exposure to salt to chemical burns or rubbing sandpaper on human skin. Needless to say, it is highly irritating and painful for the animal.
Death can be slow and painful
Due to their resilience, slugs usually do not die immediately from salting. They often endure minutes to hours of suffering before finally succumbing to the effects. Some may even survive if the salt is washed off quickly, but sustain permanent damage or disabilities.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals strongly discourages salting and considers it an inhumane method of controlling garden slugs. They recommend more humane slug deterrents instead, like eggshells or copper tape barriers.
While salting slugs may seem harmless fun, it ultimately causes unnecessary animal suffering. Next time you see a slug, just let it be or move it gently with a trowel.
More Humane Ways to Get Rid of Slugs
Create barriers around plants
One of the most effective and humane ways to protect plants from slugs is to create barriers that prevent the slugs from reaching them. Some great options include:
- Copper tape – Slugs dislike copper and will avoid crossing over it. Creating a copper tape barrier around potted plants or garden beds provides an invisible shield.
- Diatomaceous earth – This powdery natural substance is like miniature razor blades to soft-bodied slugs. Sprinkling it around plants deters slugs from crawling over it.
- Coffee grounds – Used coffee grounds spread around plants make an uncomfortable surface for slugs to travel across.
These barriers allow you to protect plants without having to kill slugs. The slugs will simply avoid those areas and look elsewhere for vegetation.
Attract slug predators to the garden
Instead of killing slugs yourself, you can recruit natural predators to take care of the job. Popular slug predators include:
- Toads – These voracious amphibians can each eat up to 10,000 insect pests per season, including slugs and snails.
- Ground beetles – These insects actively hunt slugs at night and during moist conditions.
- Birds – Grackles, robins, thrushes, and ducks will all happily feed on slugs in the garden.
You can draw more predators to your garden by providing shelter and food sources. For example, a small pond with marginal plants will attract ducks and toads. Letting certain weeds grow (like dandelions) will feed ground beetles.
Platform bird feeders and houses give birds protected places to rest and dine between slug hunts.
Trap slugs
Trapping is an effective way to remove slugs from your garden humanely. Some smart trapping techniques include:
- Beer traps – Sink shallow containers of beer into the soil near plants. Slugs are attracted to the yeasty odor but then drown after falling in.
- Aspirin trap – Make a solution of 1 aspirin dissolved per gallon of water. Spray this on infested plants. It lures slugs which are then killed by the aspirin.
- Apple slice traps – Fresh apple slices attract slugs overnight. In the morning, you can dispose of the accumulated slugs on the fruit.
Trapping and relocating slugs is a harmless way to protect plants. However, it’s best to release them at least 50 feet away, so they don’t return. Otherwise, you may have to resort to more aggressive chemical measures to control severe infestations.
Ethical Considerations Around Protecting Gardens
Slugs can decimate vegetable crops
Garden slugs like the common gray garden slug can be a gardener’s worst nightmare. These slimy mollusks use their raspy tongues to devour tender vegetable plants and seedlings overnight, leaving behind telltale slime trails and holes in leaves.
A single gray garden slug can eat up to 40 times its body weight in vegetable matter per day. An infestation of slugs can quickly decimate a thriving vegetable garden or farm field (1). According to agricultural experts, slugs are responsible for the loss of approximately $20 million worth of vegetables grown in the United States each year (2).
Gardeners have a right to protect their crops
Most gardeners and farmers would agree that they have a right to protect their hard work and investment from destruction. After all, growing fruits, vegetables, and herbs takes considerable time, effort, and money. Produce from home gardens and farms is a significant source of food for many families.
Therefore, safeguarding gardens against predation from slugs and other pests is a matter of food security. With slugs capable of wiping out entire plantings of lettuce, cabbage, beans, and other crops, it’s understandable that gardeners want to take action to protect their produce.
Causing any creature unnecessary suffering raises ethical issues
However, most gardeners want to protect their crops in an ethical way. Causing any living creature unnecessary pain and suffering raises ethical concerns, regardless of whether the animal is a pest species.
There are several reasons why subjecting slugs to a slow, agonizing death may be ethically questionable:
- Slug brains are quite simple, and it’s unclear if they can experience pain and fear the way more complex animals can (3). However, slugs do have a basic nervous system and react to negative stimuli, suggesting some capacity to suffer.
- Slug populations can rapidly rebound, so methods perceived as cruel often provide only temporary relief for gardeners.
- More humane alternatives exist, like collecting slugs by hand and releasing them far away or using iron phosphate slug bait that causes slugs to stop feeding without prolonged suffering.
- A principle of ethical gardening is to foster life rather than torture it. As Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh put it: βEven if we only cultivate lettuce mindfully, we are making a contribution to life in the universeβ (4).
There are no definitive scientific answers about slug sentience and capacity for suffering. Thus, gardeners must weigh evidence and ethical priorities to make their own informed choices. A thoughtful, compassionate approach is usually the wisest course.
Conclusion
While it’s understandable that gardeners want to protect their crops from being decimated by slugs, most experts agree that salting slugs causes unnecessary suffering. There are more humane methods gardeners can use to control slug populations.
However, gardeners do have reasonable rights to stop slugs from destroying all their hard work as well.
