“Not sure if I’ve ever seen a more fitting name for a creature before … “
Two years back, wildlife photographer Nick Volpe was exploring the forests of Wellington, New Zealand, when something peculiar caught his eye. Creeping along the ground was a creature that looked shockingly like a pickle.
With his trained eye, Volpe quickly identified the animal as a leaf vein slug, part of a rare subspecies affectionately known as the New Zealand pickle slug. These slugs are almost always active at night, so spotting one during the day was a rare treat.
“To say I was excited is an understatement,” Volpe later shared on X.
When Volpe gently scooped up the slug, the resemblance to a brined cucumber became even clearer. Its skin was the same green as a deli pickle, and its back was studded with small bumps that looked just like pickle warts.
“He’s basically a pickle with a heartbeat,” Volpe joked on Instagram.
Pickle slugs are air-breathing gastropods that live exclusively in New Zealand. Because they are so secretive, scientists still know relatively little about them, though it’s believed they snack on algae and fungi during their nightly wanderings. Their odd pickle disguise, however, serves an important function: their green coloring helps them camouflage in the undergrowth, while the bumpy papillae on their backs further break up their outline.
As IFL Science explained, those bumpy protrusions can even swell or shift in some slug species, allowing them to alter their appearance. To human observers, though, the resemblance is uncanny — even their eggs look a bit like cocktail onions from a jar of pickles.
“Never seen a more accurate name for a species,” one commenter wrote under Volpe’s post.
Although Volpe hasn’t run into another pickle slug since that unusual encounter, he says the memory still makes him smile.
“I fell in love with that little guy,” Volpe said. “It was like holding a living, breathing pickle.”