Crawling on Slime Costs 12 Times More Than Running

💰 Support the channel: USDT TRC20: TBebXWjFeAJHfArVsJvt8N6Yv5rvn4GXP7 Every slug crawls on glue. The slime under its foot holds it to the ground like an adhesive, turns liquid wherever the foot pushes hard enough, and sets solid again a moment later. The physics was worked out in 1980 on the banana slug, and it showed that crawling on slime costs about 12 times as much as running. In 2017, engineers at Harvard's Wyss Institute copied the defensive slime of the dusky arion, a slug of northeastern American woods, and made a tough surgical adhesive that sealed a hole in a pig heart through tens of thousands of inflation cycles. This video follows one liquid through seven jobs: glue, lubricant, a map home, a raincoat, a weapon, a rope for mating and a meal. Why slugs gave up their shells and what it cost them in water, why salt kills them, how leopard slugs mate hanging in midair from a rope of slime and then eat it, and why the banana slug of the redwoods became California's official state slug in 2024. Plus how to protect a garden without cruelty, why metaldehyde bait is dangerous for dogs, and why no one should ever swallow a slug: the rat lungworm parasite. 👍Subscribe for a new wildlife documentary every week. #slug #slugs #bananaslug #leopardslug #wildlife #wildlifedocumentary #animalfacts #naturedocumentary #slime #biomimicry #redwoods #california #gardening #science #natureeducation