Giant black slugs are a fictional species of carnivorous gastropods featured in Shaun Hutson

Shaun Hutson

Shaun Hutson is a writer of novels including horror novels and dark urban thrillers. A native of Letchworth Garden City in Hertfordshire, England, Hutson now lives and writes in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire....

's horror novels Slugs

Slugs (novel)

Slugs is a 1982 horror novel written by Shaun Hutson. In 1988 it was adapted as an American horror film of the same name. In this book, carnivorous slugs go on a rampage.They Slime... They ooze... They kill......

, Breeding Ground and the 1988 film of the same name

Slugs (film)

Slugs, muerte viscosa is a 1988 American horror film based on the novel Slugs by Shaun Hutson. It was banned in the Australian state of Queensland until the early-'90s when the Queensland Censorship Board was disbanded....

. They are often seen by James Herbert

James Herbert

James Herbert, OBE is a best-selling English horror writer who originally worked as the art director of an advertising agency. He is a full-time writer who also designs his own book covers and publicity.-Family:...

 fans as rip-off

Rip-Off

Rip-Off is a top-down vector shoot 'em up arcade game released by Cinematronics in 1980. It is the first shoot 'em up arcade game to feature cooperative gameplay and to exhibit flocking behavior.-Gameplay:...

s of the Giant Black Rats.

Biology

Superficially and internally, the giant blacks are indistinguishable from the ordinary black slug

Black slug

The black slug also known as black arion, European black slug, or large black slug, scientific name Arion ater, is a species of large land slug, a terrestrial slug in the family Arionidae, the roundback slugs.-Description:...

, save for their considerably greater size ranging from 5 to 8 inches in length. This has led to the theory that they are in fact the product of hybridization by the black slugs and one of three native carnivorous slugs in Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

. Unlike their alleged flesh eating parent species which limit themselves to earthworm

Earthworm

Earthworm is the common name for the largest members of Oligochaeta in the phylum Annelida. In classical systems they were placed in the order Opisthopora, on the basis of the male pores opening posterior to the female pores, even though the internal male segments are anterior to the female...

s, the giant blacks are social

Social

The term social refers to a characteristic of living organisms...

 hunters that travel in large groups, engulfing and devouring large prey alive through sheer weight of numbers.
Also unlike other slugs, the mucus they produce to aide their mobility contains a neurotoxin which if ingested causes symptoms similar to rabies

Rabies

Rabies is a viral disease that causes acute encephalitis in warm-blooded animals. It is zoonotic , most commonly by a bite from an infected animal. For a human, rabies is almost invariably fatal if post-exposure prophylaxis is not administered prior to the onset of severe symptoms...

 before finally killing the unfortunate host. Their mucus glands are especially large and allow the giant blacks to survive hot and arid environments, though damp conditions are still required for their eggs to develop.
Their bloodstream is infested with unusually large parasitic Schistosoma

Schistosoma

A genus of trematodes, Schistosoma, commonly known as blood-flukes and bilharzia, includes flatworms which are responsible for a highly significant parasitic infection of humans by causing the disease schistosomiasis, and are considered by the World Health Organization as the second most...

s which if swallowed, will incubate within the hosts brain before growing large enough to cause death.

Movie Portrayal

In the 1988 film Slugs, rather than being hybrid slugs from Britain, the movie giant blacks are toxic waste

Toxic waste

Toxic waste is waste material that can cause death or injury to living creatures. It spreads quite easily and can contaminate lakes and rivers. The term is often used interchangeably with “hazardous waste”, or discarded material that can pose a long-term risk to health or environment.Toxic waste...

 spawned slugs from America

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Though the book specifically stated that the slugs were virtually identical to the ordinary black slugs, their movie counterparts possessed anatomically incorrect mouths with canine teeth

Canine tooth

In mammalian oral anatomy, the canine teeth, also called cuspids, dogteeth, fangs, or eye teeth, are relatively long, pointed teeth...

.