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Tag: snails

  • Snails Tune Their Slime

    Snails Tune Their Slime

    Snails have a mucus for every occasion. The grove snail/lemon snail makes five different varieties: one for lubricating its motion, one for adhering to surfaces, one to seal it in its shell for winter, and two to protect against predators. A new study looks at how those different types of mucus differ.

    The basic building blocks of a snail’s mucus don’t vary much. It’s mostly water, spiked with proteins and carbohydrates that give it its complex properties. For the grove snail, collogen VI acts as the main structural component and amorphous calcium carbonate gets added in varying amounts during secretion. By tuning the amount of protein and added calcium, the snails tweak their mucus’ viscoelasticity for each purpose. (Image credit: Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces; research credit: M. Gabler et al.; via Ars Technica)

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    Fishing With Mucus

    The scaled wormsnail isn’t much for travel. It lives its whole life cemented to a rock in the tidal lands. And when you can’t go out for food, you have to wait for the food to come to you. During high tides, the snail lets out tendrils of mucus that capture bits of kelp, plankton, and whatever else the water brings. The snails haul their catch directly into their mouths, relying on the mucus’s impressive viscoelasticity to withstand the journey. (Video and image credit: Deep Look)

  • Snail Locomotion

    Snail Locomotion

    Snails and other gastropods move using their single muscular foot and a viscoelastic fluid they secrete. Muscular waves in the foot run from tail to head and are transmitted to the ground through the thin, sticky mucus layer without the snail ever fully detaching from the surface. The characteristics of this mucus layer are critical to the snail’s locomotion. As a movement cycle begins, the mucus behaves like an elastic solid. As the muscular wave approaches, it shears the fluid, increasing its stress and ultimately reaching the yield point, where the gel begins to flow. Once the wave passes, the mucus quickly transitions back to its elastic solid behavior. The net result of each cycle is an asymmetric force that propels the snail forward while keeping it adhered to whatever surface it’s crawling on.

    Many animals rely on similarly complex fluids to move, attack prey, defend against predators, or enable their reproduction. Check out this review article for more examples. (Image credit: A. Perry; see also P. Rühs et al.; submitted by Pascal B.)