Snail slime may have scientific significance, I’m sure

Today’s question:

Snails leave a trail of slime wherever they go. Does this have a purpose? It would seem like an unnecessary waste of biological resources to produce this goo for no reason. Hold on a minute.

What business is it of yours how snails use their biological resources? Do snails go around asking you why you produce whatever goo you might produce? If snails want to produce goo, that’s their lookout and none of your own.

But as long as you asked:

For a long time snail scientists thought snails need that trail of slime to lubricate their paths as they make their way on their one single foot through a cold, unfeeling, generally anti-snail world.

However, a few years ago, a Stanford graduate student named Janice Lai discovered that isn’t necessarily so.

Lai used high resolution video and lasers to study snails as they slimed their way along and discovered they don’t necessarily always need that mucouslike slime to move horizontally.

Any damp surface will do.

They do, however, need the slime to move vertically.

It not only eases their locomotion but sort of glues them to a surface they need to climb or even to crawl upside down across your ceiling. Snails appreciate that.

So I guess they just keep sliming away so the stuff will be there should they run into a stem or a wall or some obstruction they need to climb up or over. It is as useful to them as a glue as it is as a lubricant.

This is important, according to the piece I read about Lai’s work, for the field of creating snail-like robots.

For instance, researchers in Japan are working on a robot-snail endoscope that would crawl around inside you and show doctors what’s going on in there.

Have a question for Clay? Reach him at 602-444-8612 or clay.thompson@arizonarepublic.com.