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Article: Trails make for go-faster snails.
- Article from:
- Sunderland Echo (Pennywell, England)
- Article date:
- February 28, 2007
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Johnston Publishing Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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ENERGY-SAVING snails borrow their pals' trails to make the pace, scientists have discovered.
On the surface, snails don't come across as the brightest in the animal kingdom, but new research at Sunderland University suggests they are not as slow as they look.
The university's Professor Mark Davies has been studying snails for 10 years and has found that snails use each other's mucus trails to move around, saving up to a third of their energy.
Prof Davies and masters student Janine Blackwell have found that by using existing trails these particular snails, and probably all snails, have to create only a fraction of the mucus needed to make a new ...