For one thing, rabbits don't actually have that much sex, they just reproduce in great numbers, due mainly to multiple births and a short gestation. Humans typically strive to reverse that ratio, having lots of sex and few offspring. And I suspect (OK, I grew up in the country, I know) that rabbit sex is fleeting - hardly the stuff of bedroom bragging rights.
Banana slugs, on the other hand, are fascinating procreators. For starters, they are hermaphrodites and can self-fertilize. But where's the fun in that? So the giant slugs (which, averaging 6 inches but occasionally measuring an impressive foot in length, are the largest known in the world) pursue each other for a day or more. When the chase grows old, the pair copulates - reciprocating sperm - ceaselessly for several days on end. All of which sheds new light on an ill-chosen fling of mine - a student at the University of California at Santa Cruz - who proudly informed me that the school's mascot was the banana slug.
Which almost brings me to my real point, which is that if you ever want to feel truly ignorant, just look under a log. Or in a puddle. The world is so absolutely packed with biodiversity - despite our best collective efforts to the contrary - that every molecule fascinates and surprises.
Or at least it should. Banana slugs, to return to our heroes for a moment, reside in Pacific coastal forests - an environment which is threatened every day by development, logging, and pollution. In our hunger for resources, it's easy to be deluded into thinking that a clear-cut forest can become, with proper management, a renewable resource. But the equivalence could not be more superficial. A natural forest is a macro-ecosystem. Trees in the understory coexist with shrubs, open grassy areas, wetlands, and a myriad of animals - from the majestic cougar to the bizarre slime mold - which neither do nor can exist elsewhere. The multi-tiered canopy, formed by trees of endless variety, is itself an ecosystem full of endangered marbled murrelets and misunderstood "scuzz” fungi.
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