David Kirsh wrote:

> Our captive Cepaea are eating romaine and carrots. I'm not sure about their interest in the dead leaves in the container. (These Cepaea are from Cambridge, Massachusetts, so it's possible they have educated tastes.)

* when Ulrich Schneppat was here for our slug workshop -
http://pinicola.ca/slugwork.htm - he said that it's important to make
the distinction between plants that slugs and snails eat when they don't
have a choice, or that have already been bruised or broken, and those
that they "attack" when the plants are intact.

I haven't done a lot of feeding trials, but in the case of Carrots, I
know our Cepaea prefer the rind of the dry stems to the cut roots; and
by Ulrich's criteria, the cut roots are already "not intact."

I know from feeding Goats and Rabbits fallen Maple leaves, that there's
a big difference in palatability between the freshly fallen leaves, or
those that are dried without leaching (=potato chips) and leached out
litter from the ground (=dirt).

fred.
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          Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
Bishops Mills Natural History Centre - http://pinicola.ca/bmnhc.htm
Thirty Years Later Expedition - http://pinicola.ca/thirty/
Longterm ecological monitoring - http://fragileinheritance.ca/
Portraits of light - http://www.aletakarstad.com/
Mudpuppy Night in Oxford Mills - http://pinicola.ca/mudpup1.htm
     RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
   on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
    (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca/
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