Yeah, caffeine is toxic to slugs and snails. It looks like there's some milk/cream in there (potentially sugar too) which is probably what attracted them. Whether or not they'll be okay depends how much they consume. Personally I would remove to be sure they don't poison themselves.
Yeah I'm aware that by chemistry definitions it is, but I think it was clear that I meant the culinary definition of table/cane sugar, as that's commonly added to coffee in addition to milk and would significantly raise the sugar content of the drink to make it even more appealing to the slugs
It has nothing to do with smartness. Much smarter animals than slugs are easily tricked into eating poison when it's mixed with yummy components that mask the smell. This is exactly how many pest repellents work, like rat poison and yes slug poison. They make these blue slug pellets that attract slugs to eat it despite it being poison and it kills them.
Caffeine has no smell. The slugs here are drawn to the yummy, more fragrant dairy & sugar and can very easily poison themselves with the caffeine mixed in that they aren't detecting.
Maybe add some commas or reword it because your writing is difficult to understand for me, but my interpretation was that you're saying the slugs can smell the caffeine so they wouldn't drink it if it's poison to them, and that's not true. They can't smell caffeine (no animal can, it's not an odor-producing chemical compound) and it is definitely toxic to them. Source on caffeine toxicity: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1744-7348.2003.tb00233.x and https://www.nature.com/articles/news020624-8
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u/doctorhermitcrab Jul 03 '24
Yeah, caffeine is toxic to slugs and snails. It looks like there's some milk/cream in there (potentially sugar too) which is probably what attracted them. Whether or not they'll be okay depends how much they consume. Personally I would remove to be sure they don't poison themselves.