Robots are being trained to zap slugs.
Slugs face a new threat from robots
Boffin Tom Allen Stevens is asking gardeners to send in the plant-munching animals for a project that is designed to prevent them from being culled using chemicals.
He is aiming to develop a death squad of robots that will spray the slugs with nematodes - microscopic worms that are able to liquify the garden nuisances from the inside.
Stevens, who runs Bofin (British On-Farm Innovation Network), said: "They are arable farming's biggest pest. It costs the industry about £43 million a year to treat them.
"We need to take lots of photos of slugs and the damage they do and feed them into the algorithm."