February 12, 2013 • 34 mins
We all love slime, but do we really respect it in all its glory? Join Julie and Robert for a mucus-coated journey through the slime of slugs, sea hags and fish. Learn how it provides locomotion, protection, communication and food.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
this is our trilogy of slime. Uh. This episode is
a trilogy of slime. But then also this uh, this
episode is kicking off a series of three different episodes
(00:26):
that deal with slime in the world. Generally biologically speaking,
it's uh, we're gonna be knee deep in slime and
so are you guys at yeah, elbow in it. Ha
ha ha. And it's gonna be awesome because this episode
we will talk more about uh, snails, a couple other
(00:47):
critters out there in the world in their use of slime.
But we will we will eventually get into slugs, slugs, sex,
and whether or not slime can I actually have a
sort of memory. But of course we're talking to the
second and third episodes right now. We need to talk
about the slime of nature. Yes, now, slime, just just
(01:08):
in a general sinse slime is is pretty awesome. Having
been a young boy and still having a bit of
a young boy inside my mind. Um, I just I
have a lot of fun memories about slimy things. Um,
watch it watching on television watching various slimy stunts. Remember Nickelodeon,
(01:28):
of course those guys dropping slime and people And apparently
this is a big tradition in British television since like
the seventies or even the sixties of using some sort
of stunt where someone gets dunked in slime. Well, and
of course there was actual slime itself that you could
make and play with, which is a big deal, right.
I'm sure a lot of people have done actually in
their science classes. Yeah. Or my mom is a kindergarten
(01:51):
teacher and um, every year they do this thing where
they make the ublic, which is a type of slime substance. Um,
and the recipe is in the back of a Doctor
SEUs book called Dublic. So yeah, I mean kids, kids
love slime. I also remember the Masters of the Universe
action figures. They had something called the slime Pit. I
don't know, did you Your brother might have had this
(02:12):
back and I don't think you had the slime pit. Well,
the slime pit was gross and most I think there
are a lot of parents that refused to buy it.
My ensure did um, But on TV it looked great
because it was like this little you know, little con
construction was a little set for your your master's universe
heman figures and whatnot. And the evil Hordac would Hordac
(02:33):
he was he would lock he man or whoever into
the slime pit and then you would dunk slime on them,
and it was, you know, like, well, they're so gross
and disgusting now and they're covered with slime, and so
parents tended not to buy that. And of course, you
know this is uh, this sort of slime thing we
see later on in films like Alien right, this is
(02:54):
used to Yeah, I mean, this is this this is
a great thing to try to get people to be
completely repulsed. Yeah. An interesting fact that I learned when
I was writing the Xenomorp article for how stuff works.
When they were filming Alien, they had to like, yeah,
they had to coat the creature and all this google
for every shot, but that would wear the paint op.
So hr Geeger was having to repaint uh, that Alien
(03:16):
suit every evening or every morning before they before the
shoot so that they wouldn't so that it would look right.
You know, that would be such a cool job to
be the slime artist on that set. Seriously, you'd have
to make vats of it and have to be the
right kind of viscosity. Yeah, it would be pretty good stuff.
And there are a lot of a lot of slime
monsters out there to get excited about. You sent me
a list stuff from High nine yesterday, just a whole lot,
(03:38):
and I was going through that and some of them
I was, you know, well familiar with some not um
some of my favorites though. Of course the Blob. Everyone
loves the Blob. I didn't monster the Week article about
the Blob talking about the possible science of the giant Amba.
This is the fifties the Blob. Yeah, the nineties remake
is really fun to people often overlook it. But but
(03:59):
but but it's it's nice. It's nice that blob has
really high hair. Well, that blob it's a different type
of blog. It's a kind of a fast moving blob
and uh and but there's some nice nineteen eighties gore
effects in there. I just want to imagine it with
really big blonde hair spiked up. Yeah, there's a lot
of that going on. Um. The Gelatinous Cube was a
favorite of mine from Dungeons and dragons. This was a
(04:20):
big cube of clear blob jelly, and it would it
would live in dungeon hallways, and so you'd be running
around through the dungeon and you wouldn't see it because
it looks clear, and then you go straight into it
and then it dissolves you down to bones and armor
inside it. I love it. Yeah, so that's a fun one.
You had yet Ectoplasm and Ghostbusters too. There was a
(04:43):
lot of slime the effects there. You Hat Slimer and
Ghostbusters one of course. Um Stephen King short stories. You
had both the Raft and Gray Matter, both blob inspired tales.
Um On Star Trek the Next Generation you had this
one character called Armus who looks like this black, oily
slime monster the ends up eating the blonde lady of course. Yeah.
(05:05):
So I mean there's just a list that you can
find whole lists of slime monsters on the on the internet.
They're all great. I mean there are movies like The
Green Slime and you could go on and on. Yeah,
and uh, you know, we are going to talk about
this glorious go this slime and its role in nature.
So we're gonna look at snails, the hagfish, and the
African linkfish. But no zen no zeno morphs. Yeah, unfortunately. Uh,
(05:25):
but slugs I think can take the place of xenomorphs
pretty well. Yeah, slugs are slugs are gross. I I'm
I'm gonna try and mask over this in the a
little bit, probably will fail in the slug sex episode.
But slugs of I've always found repulsive. And it's not
really the slime per se. The slime is a part
of it, I'm sure, but it's kind of a small part.
There's just a lot going on. It's repulsive about them.
(05:47):
They're just like they're big and they're bloated and and
it's not like like a little snail with a little
shell that doesn't really affect me, like that's cute. I
I actually will go to pains not to step on
a on a snail. Really. Yeah. If I show you
this picture, I wonder how you'll feel about that. Now.
But well, those are on a person's face. Okay. What
(06:08):
I have is about maybe eight of these snails which
are related to slugs, we now, um, and they are
on this man's face cringing in pain. I well, I
think he's faking the pain. It looks more like repulsion
if anything. But I don't know. I think they're doing
something to his nostril air. Well yeah, okay, so I
don't really like that at all, but I just wanted
(06:30):
to see your level of sensitivity. But if they were
just on on on the you know, in some rocks
outside of a house on a rainy day, I would
I would just let it go. Well, I will tell
you that I love these guys. They're juicy, is squishy,
and they leave a trail. They're they're beautifully disgusting creatures,
and we're going to get into the merits of these creatures. Well,
(06:53):
I do respect the slug in the snail. I mean,
gastropods are amazing. And one of the things that about slime,
and one one of the things we really want to
bring out about slime in this episode is that it
is such a fantastic organic substance and there's so many
uses for it and it's used for so many things
that even if even as if you're into it in
this kind of like eight year old slime is awesome
(07:15):
kind of way, you're really only getting this one dimensional
idea of what slime is and what it what it
what it can and is used for. Yeah, it is
amazing stuff. Let's talk about slugs though. Let's talk about
their appearance, their anatomy. They are smooth and uniform and
appearance essentially snails without the albatross of a shell. Yeah,
(07:36):
they dropped that in their evolutionary history. They dropped that.
And we'll talk a little bit more about that though,
because that has definitely informed the placement of certain things
on their anatomy. Uh. They get through get around through
hydrostatic pulses of their tube like bodies as well as
the slime that helps them locomote. Yeah, they have that foot, yes, Yeah,
They've got a little gastropod foot and they sense the
(07:58):
world using two sets of tentacles or feelers on their heads,
so one set detect light and dark. All right, let's
talk about the slime that they have. This this slime
that they they put out, it's it's it's really fascinating
just just from a chemical standpoint. I was reading this article, um.
It was talking about the work of u W bioengineering
(08:18):
professor's pedro Verdugo and Christopher Vinny, and they were working
with the zoology professor Ingrith dere Olsen and this was
this is from But they were looking at the way
slugs use it for for protection, for for locomotion, all
these methods that we're talking about and the but they
were interested in what it was like at a molecular level.
(08:41):
And previously h researchers thought that slug sign was more
like a bowl of spaghetti, just lets of tangled strands
of goo, like somebody blowing their nose continuously into a bowl.
Kind of I know this disgusting, but we're talking about slimes,
so just imagine that that was kind of like the
idea on a on a smaller level. And the more
the more strands, the more tangled, the more mucus is
(09:02):
what they thought. But in these guys show that slug
mucus is not random. It is a highly organized polymetric material.
And when secreted, the polymer absorbs water rapidly up to
a hundred times it's initial volume, So it's kind of
like a you know, just add water kind of a situation.
In fact, this slime is packed in and as granules
(09:24):
inside the body. Uh there's dry mucus in granules, Yeah,
like granules of mucus. And then when they pump it out,
then it activates and then it touches water, and then
it grows into the slime substance. Okay, so this is
why slugs don't soak up too much water and explode
when they crawl across water, because they can control that
action of the granules meeting the water and then expanding. Yeah.
(09:46):
One of the things that I found useful in just
thinking about slime is to not not to think of
it merely as something that is excreted, that is, that
is external to the creature though, I mean, of course
it is, but but to really think of it as
the outer layer of that creature's body. It's really a
part of it. I mean, it's and we're going to
get into all the various uses for it as we
(10:08):
continue here, but the slime is essentially a part of
the creature. Well right, it's just another layer of skin,
so to speak, or you know. Yeah. Um, so here
this is really important though, um this secretion because obviously
they do this for various reasons. But if you were
to pick up a slug and it would feel threatened,
that it would produce a lot of the goo, a
(10:29):
lot of this mucus, and and that's what you get.
You should get a fistful of slime. If you're picking
going around picking up slugs, what's the matter with you? Now,
Some listeners may have done this before and discovered that
if they picked it up and they went to go
wash their hands afterwards, what would happen. Well, when they
tried to get that goo off of their hands, the
(10:49):
slime would actually double in volume or triple because again,
you've got that water and it's it's just gonna make
matters worse. You're trying to wash your hands off, and
the best thing to do is actually not even get
to the water first. Just getta dry towel, wipe it
off as much as possible, and then wash your hands. Yeah,
(11:10):
but I mean he's picking these things up. I mean
the cool thing about that is it shows you the
incredible adhesive properties that it has. Right hands, it's just
incredibly hard to get off. But it gives you a
big clue as to um how they get around, how
they navigate with this. Well. Yeah, and it also shows
it gives you a little insight into how versatile slime
(11:32):
is because on one hand, it's used for locomotion, it's
used about reduce it's about reducing friction so that I
mean basically, the slime the slug or snail is creating
a little road for itself that it can travel um
and in the road that other snails may encounter, and
they're able to tell where and when the last slug
or snail was on that trail, like it's a There's
(11:54):
also a lot of communication going on here, which we'll
get into. But yeah, let's talk a little bit more
about how get around here. Because slugs have no articulate
skeletal systems, so they have to crawl, and they do
this by using complex muscle movements, especially a broad muscular
organ at the base of the snails body known as
the foot, as you said, and these actions are then
(12:14):
aided by the slime that the slug secrete. So as
you have said, um, it does double duty. It can
reduce friction between the snails body and the ground to
let them glide along, but together with the sucking action
of the foot soul, it can help the snail stick
to a surface. So we're talking about the edge of
a knife here. Yeah, yeah, I mean, if you can
find videos are the famously slugs can crawl over the
(12:35):
blade of a razor in their unscathed. Uh slug snails
with large shells can climb up trees carrying this heavyweight
with them in Its no big deal because it's because
of the versatility of the slime. And like I mentioned,
UH the second ago, slugs used slime to communicate with
each other. With each other UM, a slun slugs trail
will contain various important important directional information allows a second
(12:59):
slug to fall. Of a slug is in the mood
to mate, that will be a signal inside of the
slime that it's secreting. So this kind of a mood
slime going on as well. When a when a slug
is putting out some slime in a way it is uh,
it's writing a poem, it's sending out a missive to
the rest of the gastropod world to interpret. And we
(13:21):
will talk in the next podcast about that courtship dance,
which is so incredibly bizarre and beautiful and discussing at
the same time. Now, another thing you mentioned about the
picking up a slug and about when they're threatened, that's
another thing that's another example of mood slime. UM. Many
snails can foam when they encounter a predator or if
they touch something that is repulsive, which I guess is
(13:44):
kind of ironic, but don't encounter substance that they don't dig.
And when they do, they just whip out the slime.
Because again, this is like you know people when someone
says something, you know, kind of mean to somebody and
they get hurt, they say, why don't you grow some skin,
Grow some thick skins so you can deal with that. Well,
that's kind of what this the slug or the snail
is doing here counter something it doesn't like. It grows
(14:04):
that skin, It grows that layer of slime that that
distances itself from the potential dangers of the world. Can
also be distasteful or toxic um in content, so that
if a bird wants to peck at it, it will
soon discover that this is not something it wants to eat.
So that's a good way that it can avoid predators. Um,
it can use it slimes a repelling cord to lower
(14:25):
itself down on the ground from plants. Again, that's stickiness
and the durability of the slime. And this is all
just just one reason why scientists continue to be very
interested in the biomometic possibilities for slime looking at it
and saying, what is there about um about the gastropod
use of slime that we can learn from and then
we can use in our products and our technologies. So
(14:46):
you're talking about possibilities and drug delivery systems, pollutant traps
for sewage treatment plants, water based lubricants, chemical information storage.
I mean, the list goes on and on, Yeah, because
it really is amazing how the slime organizes itself and
helps the slug out here just how versatile was it? Well,
you actually have bubble rafting snails, and this is pretty
(15:08):
pretty amazing. These are These are all aquatic snails and
they what they do is they secrete this the mucus
from their their foot and then they they use this
to create this um, this kind of float that they
they then live under for the rest of their lives.
So it's like a raft, like barnacles stuck to it. Yeah,
a little raft that they live underneath. And you know,
(15:29):
actually this reminds me a bet of the Stephen King story,
the raft in which you had a wooden raft and
there are these teenagers stuck on top of it and
there is grotesque oily blob monster underneath trying to eat them.
You see how all roads lead to Stephen King just
about I mean, he wrote a lot of stuff, so
you know, anything that entered his head. Uh, there's a
good chance that exited as a short story or a
(15:50):
gigantic novel. Um. But but this particular use of the
mucus is really interested because they mucus has bubbles in it,
so that's why it's floating and it serves as this
uh thing that they're anchored to for the rest of
their life. It's really interesting too when you start looking
at why they do this, how they evolved to do this,
and the general idea is that uh ancestors of these
(16:13):
uh bubble rafting snails were using their their hardened slime
to anchor eggs on the bottom of the of the
body of water that they're in. Uh, and this practice
eventually evolved into the use of adding air bubbles to
it and using it as this floatation device that they
depend on. Yeah, that's really cool. And that's that again
at the adhesive property and the ability to have some
(16:36):
sort of flexible movement to that A lot of researchers
are interested in when it comes to healing bones, for instance,
they're trying to figure out how slime and its ability
to harden at times um but also locomote could help
bones better heal. So they're all sorts of really cool things.
The other thing I was thinking about is that it
always comes down to reproductive fitness. So if you see this, uh,
(17:00):
this raft configuration, this gloming on, it's because you know,
the survival of that egg is important to the species.
And we'll talk more about this in the slug Sex podcast.
But it really when you look at the reasons for
a lot of things in nature, it's very interesting to
see how everything's were evolved from around that basic reason. Now,
(17:21):
I was really in researching slugs and snales. I was
really horrified, slash amazed by how successful they are um it,
particularly in areas where they're invasive of course, and they're
invasive a lot of like a lot of the sales
of slugs we up here in North America were introduced.
I'm sure anyone who had who belongs to say a
c S A Communities supported Agriculture group has wound up
(17:44):
with slugs in the kitchen before I have. I see
this is what it's all coming down to. You had
a really bad experience with the slug. Well, this was
like a couple of months ago. I mean, I don't
know when I had quote unquote bad experiences of slugs.
I remember seeing big slugs when as a kid that
none of them ever attacked me or anything. But but
they'll show up, like occasionally they'll hit a ride on
(18:06):
some produce and then they're in your sink and you
have that moment where you think your your house is
being invaded by slugs. And some people's houses are invaded
by slugs and it's disgusting. But who's whose house is
invaded by I I hear things about people who are like, yes,
slugs crawling in my house at night here and Georgia, Yeah,
I think so. Yeah, But um, because they can go
(18:29):
under the door and stuff. It's I mean, they're they're
they're they're squashy, they're squishy, they can they can squeeze.
But anyway, my point being is that they're they're tremendously
great at chomping down produce. They can be quite a pest.
I was reading in this book by Charles C. Man
and this is about Columbus's discovery of the New World
(18:52):
and the biological ramifications of that. But he includes a
couple of accounts in there about attempts to introduce golden
apple snails from Brazil to Taiwan and then also to
the Philippines uh in a in an attempt to create
a caviar business. Both of these failed. H partially look
at the Taiwan example because the Taiwanese really weren't into
(19:15):
the idea of eating cave are. But then you end
up with these uh with these apple snails just out
and about and they're just eating everything. They're eating the
eggs of other creatures, they're eating rice plants. So these
things can be quite the pest when they get out
of control. In fact, one statum I ran across said
(19:36):
that wherever and this is from the University of Florida
or Florida if you will, um, they said that whenever
the plant damage done by snails and slugs is easily observable,
it has been determined that the live weight of the
slugs infesting the area maybe around seventy pounds per acre.
Seventy pounds of slugs. Just imagine it like I've picture
(20:00):
like congealing in the form of like a human. Just
all slug it's but um, but it's an amazing creature
and it's amazingly successful creatures. So there you go. This
is this is what I like to think about um
slugs in your beauty products. And this cracked me up
because in two thousands six Chilean farmers reportedly noticed, and
(20:21):
this sounds like an oil of a leg commercial, they
reportedly noticed visibly smoother skin after handling snails they were
breeding for the French food market. Of course. Yeah, and
this apparently falls in with some very old ideas of Hippocrates.
Of course, he reportedly prescribed a mixture of sour milk
and crushed snails for skin inflammations. So it's it's we've
(20:45):
known for a while that there's something in the slime
that that can help us, that can be beneficial. Well,
it's packed with glycolic acid, any lasting a snail secretion
protects its own skin from cuts, bacteria, and powerful UV rays,
making Mother Nature's venus a primes worst for proteins that
eliminate dead cells and regenerate skin. So I just read
(21:05):
that off a bottle of beauty product. I didn't, But
doesn't it. I mean it's yeah, Well, when you're thing,
when you're buying that booty beauty product. You think you're like, oh,
I'm getting this elegant man made ointment to rub on
on my skin and then I'm better off. But know
what you're really doing is you're stealing a snail or
slugs self defense system. You're you're you're cooping there um
(21:28):
their self defense system, and it's it's it's interesting to
think of it that way. For smith skin, it just
reminds me of like an absolutely fabulous UH episode. Did
you ever watch that? Um? I think it self? Parts
of it I remember being on. I can just imagine
Adina like flying down to Chile and noticing that the
locals have fabulous skin and then starting to put slugs
(21:50):
all over her face. UM, no doubt there's some sort
of cosmetics VP out there that has done that. All Right,
we're gonna take a quick break and when we get back,
we are going to talk about slime hagfish and UH
some of the defenses that these creatures have, including a
stuffing mouthful of slime Gaggy their nemesis. All Right, we're back.
(22:25):
So first off, we're gonna talk about the hag fish,
which is a and arguably a repulsive creature, has no
job bones, has no backbone. Um. If you've ever seen
I believe it was David eden Burrough's Life, I think
it was that that had some fantastic scenes of these
(22:46):
creatures feeding, among other creatures, feeding on a dead whale
on the ocean floor. Uh, and they'll there, that's what
they do. They like to eat decaying animal matter in
the ocean. They'll just bore in to it and then
eat their way back out of the corpse. Yeah, they're
mostly like the vultures of the sea. They do some hunting,
but they're they're basically scavengers and they're an eel like
(23:09):
looking fish. Yeah, blind and that essentially if you've seen
the movie Tremmors, those things that come out of the tremors,
the the graboids, Now those are are essentially hagfish. But
these guys have been swimming in the oceans for three
million years and there are seventy seven species all over
the world. Um, this is cool. It's got a plate
(23:30):
of cartilage studded with two rows of teeth, which it
uses to burrow down into the dead carcasses. Um. It's
only predators are either very large fish whose gills are
too big, clog or mammals which obviously don't have gills
and whose stomachs can easily digest or expel the slime.
So it's out there and it's proliferating. Yeah, I mean
(23:50):
in the slime is key because what it'll do, if
you like, I've seen some footage of fishermen pulling them out,
and when they pull them out, they tie into these
knots they kind of not their body and then start
excreting the slime. And uh, it creates quite a lot
of slime, like clear crisco looking stuff, even when they're
out of the water. But when they're in the water,
(24:10):
of course, as we discussed earlier, what what does what
does slime do? When it encounters more water, it becomes
thicker and thicker, and there's more and more of it.
So something tries to eat a hagfish, say a shark,
it pumps out the slime, and the slime is thick
and and and this viscus and shark suddenly has not
only a mouthful of hagfish, but a mouthful of choking slime. Yeah,
(24:33):
it oozes from hundreds of pores that line their bodies,
and the slime consists of large mucus proteins called muisans
linked together by longer protein threads. So when it mixes
with the seawaters, you say, it massively expands, becoming almost
a thousand times more dilute than other animal mucus. Yeah,
so it kind of leaves the slugs in the dust
there when it comes to its production of mucus. Yeah.
(24:54):
Imagine if humans had disability and someone starts messing with you,
say they grab your arm on the trend, and then
you just extrete out some slime and then that they
can't even get a handle on you. I would go
for that. Would you then feel less sort of disgusted
by slugs if you had the ability to spine your tick?
I don't know. I was thinking about that earlier today,
Like what if humans were slime creatures? And what if
(25:15):
we left trails everywhere we went? What if I don't know,
I guess you know I'd be cool with it? Then
what choice would I have? Right exactly? You'd embrace it?
I don't know. I mean, I'm kind of grossed out
by some of the things humans do just biologically, so
maybe I wouldn't be cool with it. You could be
that lone human covered in slime in the corner. Well,
I would probably be the one that's trying to groom
(25:36):
himself free of slime, and then I would have like
horrible slug skin. You'd have like little rashes on your
skin when you try to lick it off or actually
just get it off with the dry towel. As we know.
All right, So here's the cool thing about these tag
fish is that um, they're hanging out in the ocean.
They're chomping on a fish carcass. All of a sudden,
short comes up fights it. What happens, Well, it's pump
(26:00):
not the slime, right, yes, to the point that there's
so much slime in that shark's mouth that it begins
to convulse and it retreats. So what are their amlets?
Can you think of in the ocean that has such
a wonderfully direct and disgusting defense system. That's skunk ah
underwater skunk. Yes, yeah, actually it is um. And it's
(26:22):
so cool because this flenty hag fish is so confident
that it will just there's video of this, that it'll
just efforts been that it'll just kind of return to
eating again, like oh yeah, another shark just came by
tried to eat me. Yeah. Well, they're pretty pretty simple
creatures in that regard. I mean, they're very There's just
like eating corpses and occasionally sliming a shark, and that's
(26:43):
really all it has going on. And they do hunt
a bit too. There is video of them sticking their
heads into burrows trying to find fish, and then when
they do, it's thought that they choke a fish with
its slime, so they produced the slime. You can't imagine
that if you're in that burrowing, you're in that fish. Uh.
And then they not themselves the lower half of its
buddy body to gain leverage against the burrow and drag
(27:05):
the fish out. Wow. I see. I have no idea
that they ever used their slime offensively. But yeah, yeah,
not as much, right because they're mostly scavengers. But okay,
you're not always going to have that whale carc gets
to feed on, and when times are tough, you turn
to hunting a lot of scavengers. Right, So you taste
you fish, go into a burrow, and that's it. Um.
It also knots itself to help free itself from predators
(27:26):
in even as a way to clear the slime from
its body. Yes, I've seen that too. It kind of
rings itself out like a towel. I mean, not in
the sense that it's removing slime from inside it, but
just sort of like in the process of nodding itself,
it slaws it off kind of like you would if you, yea,
the same way were coming slime, I would just yeah,
we just did a little motion of getting it off
(27:47):
our arms there, all right. So this is not the
only creature obviously in the ocean that loves its slime. Actually,
all fish recovered in slime. Yeah, it's uh, and it's
it's really interesting. They out of the information we found
in this we found on fishing websites where they really
are are even better and better these days about about
(28:08):
trying to encourage fisher fishermen and fisherwomen and anglers in general.
I guess that when you catch a fish and you're
releasing it, you just try not to handle it all
that much because you're gonna wipe off slime, and the fishes,
the slime of the fish is really essential to so
many different functions, as we'll discuss here. One of the
coolest that we ran across, uh, the African lungfish and
(28:32):
the African lungfish is creature that lives in swamps backwaters
of West and South Africa. Um they're carnivores. They eat
frogs and other small fish, but occasionally there's a drought
right and when the when the shallow water that lives
in evaporates, the lungfish secretes us the slime all around
itself and forms that drives into a cocoon. And which
(28:56):
is important to you to note that they have lungs
and they can breathe are so it works in conjunction
with us. Yeah. They can live out of water in
this cocoon for up to a year, though usually it's
not quite that long, yep. And they may hibernate by
chewing into the soil and the debris at the bottom
of a waterway, ejecting mud from the gills as it
burrows down. Pretty cool and it digs one to nine
inches below the surface, then wiggles around to create a
(29:18):
bulb shaped chamber. And then when the chamber is complete,
the fish rest with its nose pointing upward and then
in water, it can survive up to four years in
the state, so pretty much goes into a state of torpor.
So what else does slime do for our fishy frienance. Well,
there's a there's a whole list of things for startist
slime plays in a portant role in the efficiency of
gas transport through the fish's skin. UH. It provides external
(29:43):
protection UH. It makes it externally slippery for larger creatures.
It makes it harder for parasites and pathogens to infiltrate
the fish. It also reduces turbulence, and this is especially
the case with fast moving fish that drag resulting from
small spaces between scales and UH and projecting body parts.
(30:03):
So you cover everything with some slime, everything smoother, the
fish is able to travel faster, more streamlined. Um Slime
is also useful for coagulating particles, providing clean water in
the immediate area around the fish, thus improving the movement
and dermal respiration. So it kind of gathers up the
dirt and allows a freshwater source. Produces toxins. We mentioned
(30:24):
this already with the hag dish producing this the slime
that uses a defensive measure, but you also see this
in lamp freeze and and other slimy creatures. They're able
to use it again as a protective and occasionally offensive weapon.
Uh cocoon formation with the long fish that we already
mentioned feeding. Several fish secrete body slimes to feed their young.
Um Baby discus fish, for instance, feed on an over
(30:47):
a bunus of slime which develops on the sides of
the parent fish at breeding time. So and finally, it
can also be used as an alarm substance or a
nest filding material. So there you go, more facts about
slime that you probably never knew. And I hope that
you have a better appreciation for the slugs in your life.
The hag fish, the African lungfish. Yeah, ultimately a slimy
(31:10):
creature is not nearly slimy so that it can, you know,
shock you or repulse you. It's it's it's far more
complicated than that, involving look, emotion, communication. And you're showing
the picture to me again. Um, I just wanted to
see coming to the merits have changed your mind? I
think you're still there. Um Oh. On a real hated note,
(31:31):
I will say I did a blog post yesterday, uh
titled good question colon how to salt melt the garden slug.
If you're interested in learning about that, go check out
that blog post. It's a It's a really fascinating situation.
It's not just a situation where the salt is is
destroying the slug, even though if that's what it looks
like when a kid puts salt on a slug, but
(31:51):
but ultimately it's drawing all of the all of the
moisture out of the slug. And it all has to
do with the nature of slime and how the slime
ultimately a part of that creature. And I guess you
could vancouish slugs we thought method if you wanted to,
although it's not so great for the ecosystem. Yeah, I
just just just gross. They're better, they're suppose one or
(32:12):
two wouldn't hurt. But there are better ways to keep
slugs away. I'm not advocating slugs sadism, yeah, because really, Yeah,
my thing with with putting salt on the slugs are
already thought they were gross, and if you put salt
on them, it's just a grosser situation. And I don't
want to cause them pain. I just want them to
not be around me. So okay, good to know. All right, Well,
on that note, we're gonna We're gonna skip on the
(32:33):
listener mail today. Maybe we'll do some of the next
couple of episodes. So, indeed, look for our Valentine's Day
episode on the sex life of slugs. It is grotesque
and should be a nice, nice remedy for anyone out
there who's just a little tired of the over commercialized
Valentine's Day nonsense. Well, I would say that there is
(32:53):
some romance. There's some some visual fireworks going on, there's
some romance. There is some romance. There's a sister man's
and sister man's. It's just it's a whole new world
of sexuality that you will discover in the next episode
of Stuff to Bow Your Mind. I think it's her
MAP romance, actually map romance. Yes, the tune in for
them af romance. So in the meantime, if you have
(33:16):
some anecdotes you'd like to share about slugs, snails, slime,
slimy fish, the purposes of slime, slime on the movies,
slime on TV shows. Slime is just part of our culture.
Let us know about it. You can find us on Facebook,
where we are Stuff to Blow your Mind. You can
find us on Tumbler, we're also stuff to blow your mind.
You can find us on Twitter, where our handles blow
(33:37):
the mind. And yes, you can share grotesque photos of
slugs and it'll probably make me wretch, but that's your
right as a listener. You guys know what to do,
all right. If you want to drop a line, you
can do so at Blow the Mind at discovery dot com.
(33:59):
Well more thisss and thousands of other topics, visit how
stuff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
this is our trilogy of slime. Uh. This episode is
a trilogy of slime. But then also this uh, this
episode is kicking off a series of three different episodes
(00:26):
that deal with slime in the world. Generally biologically speaking,
it's uh, we're gonna be knee deep in slime and
so are you guys at yeah, elbow in it. Ha
ha ha. And it's gonna be awesome because this episode
we will talk more about uh, snails, a couple other
(00:47):
critters out there in the world in their use of slime.
But we will we will eventually get into slugs, slugs, sex,
and whether or not slime can I actually have a
sort of memory. But of course we're talking to the
second and third episodes right now. We need to talk
about the slime of nature. Yes, now, slime, just just
(01:08):
in a general sinse slime is is pretty awesome. Having
been a young boy and still having a bit of
a young boy inside my mind. Um, I just I
have a lot of fun memories about slimy things. Um,
watch it watching on television watching various slimy stunts. Remember Nickelodeon,
(01:28):
of course those guys dropping slime and people And apparently
this is a big tradition in British television since like
the seventies or even the sixties of using some sort
of stunt where someone gets dunked in slime. Well, and
of course there was actual slime itself that you could
make and play with, which is a big deal, right.
I'm sure a lot of people have done actually in
their science classes. Yeah. Or my mom is a kindergarten
(01:51):
teacher and um, every year they do this thing where
they make the ublic, which is a type of slime substance. Um,
and the recipe is in the back of a Doctor
SEUs book called Dublic. So yeah, I mean kids, kids
love slime. I also remember the Masters of the Universe
action figures. They had something called the slime Pit. I
don't know, did you Your brother might have had this
(02:12):
back and I don't think you had the slime pit. Well,
the slime pit was gross and most I think there
are a lot of parents that refused to buy it.
My ensure did um, But on TV it looked great
because it was like this little you know, little con
construction was a little set for your your master's universe
heman figures and whatnot. And the evil Hordac would Hordac
(02:33):
he was he would lock he man or whoever into
the slime pit and then you would dunk slime on them,
and it was, you know, like, well, they're so gross
and disgusting now and they're covered with slime, and so
parents tended not to buy that. And of course, you
know this is uh, this sort of slime thing we
see later on in films like Alien right, this is
(02:54):
used to Yeah, I mean, this is this this is
a great thing to try to get people to be
completely repulsed. Yeah. An interesting fact that I learned when
I was writing the Xenomorp article for how stuff works.
When they were filming Alien, they had to like, yeah,
they had to coat the creature and all this google
for every shot, but that would wear the paint op.
So hr Geeger was having to repaint uh, that Alien
(03:16):
suit every evening or every morning before they before the
shoot so that they wouldn't so that it would look right.
You know, that would be such a cool job to
be the slime artist on that set. Seriously, you'd have
to make vats of it and have to be the
right kind of viscosity. Yeah, it would be pretty good stuff.
And there are a lot of a lot of slime
monsters out there to get excited about. You sent me
a list stuff from High nine yesterday, just a whole lot,
(03:38):
and I was going through that and some of them
I was, you know, well familiar with some not um
some of my favorites though. Of course the Blob. Everyone
loves the Blob. I didn't monster the Week article about
the Blob talking about the possible science of the giant Amba.
This is the fifties the Blob. Yeah, the nineties remake
is really fun to people often overlook it. But but
(03:59):
but but it's it's nice. It's nice that blob has
really high hair. Well, that blob it's a different type
of blog. It's a kind of a fast moving blob
and uh and but there's some nice nineteen eighties gore
effects in there. I just want to imagine it with
really big blonde hair spiked up. Yeah, there's a lot
of that going on. Um. The Gelatinous Cube was a
favorite of mine from Dungeons and dragons. This was a
(04:20):
big cube of clear blob jelly, and it would it
would live in dungeon hallways, and so you'd be running
around through the dungeon and you wouldn't see it because
it looks clear, and then you go straight into it
and then it dissolves you down to bones and armor
inside it. I love it. Yeah, so that's a fun one.
You had yet Ectoplasm and Ghostbusters too. There was a
(04:43):
lot of slime the effects there. You Hat Slimer and
Ghostbusters one of course. Um Stephen King short stories. You
had both the Raft and Gray Matter, both blob inspired tales.
Um On Star Trek the Next Generation you had this
one character called Armus who looks like this black, oily
slime monster the ends up eating the blonde lady of course. Yeah.
(05:05):
So I mean there's just a list that you can
find whole lists of slime monsters on the on the internet.
They're all great. I mean there are movies like The
Green Slime and you could go on and on. Yeah,
and uh, you know, we are going to talk about
this glorious go this slime and its role in nature.
So we're gonna look at snails, the hagfish, and the
African linkfish. But no zen no zeno morphs. Yeah, unfortunately. Uh,
(05:25):
but slugs I think can take the place of xenomorphs
pretty well. Yeah, slugs are slugs are gross. I I'm
I'm gonna try and mask over this in the a
little bit, probably will fail in the slug sex episode.
But slugs of I've always found repulsive. And it's not
really the slime per se. The slime is a part
of it, I'm sure, but it's kind of a small part.
There's just a lot going on. It's repulsive about them.
(05:47):
They're just like they're big and they're bloated and and
it's not like like a little snail with a little
shell that doesn't really affect me, like that's cute. I
I actually will go to pains not to step on
a on a snail. Really. Yeah. If I show you
this picture, I wonder how you'll feel about that. Now.
But well, those are on a person's face. Okay. What
(06:08):
I have is about maybe eight of these snails which
are related to slugs, we now, um, and they are
on this man's face cringing in pain. I well, I
think he's faking the pain. It looks more like repulsion
if anything. But I don't know. I think they're doing
something to his nostril air. Well yeah, okay, so I
don't really like that at all, but I just wanted
(06:30):
to see your level of sensitivity. But if they were
just on on on the you know, in some rocks
outside of a house on a rainy day, I would
I would just let it go. Well, I will tell
you that I love these guys. They're juicy, is squishy,
and they leave a trail. They're they're beautifully disgusting creatures,
and we're going to get into the merits of these creatures. Well,
(06:53):
I do respect the slug in the snail. I mean,
gastropods are amazing. And one of the things that about slime,
and one one of the things we really want to
bring out about slime in this episode is that it
is such a fantastic organic substance and there's so many
uses for it and it's used for so many things
that even if even as if you're into it in
this kind of like eight year old slime is awesome
(07:15):
kind of way, you're really only getting this one dimensional
idea of what slime is and what it what it
what it can and is used for. Yeah, it is
amazing stuff. Let's talk about slugs though. Let's talk about
their appearance, their anatomy. They are smooth and uniform and
appearance essentially snails without the albatross of a shell. Yeah,
(07:36):
they dropped that in their evolutionary history. They dropped that.
And we'll talk a little bit more about that though,
because that has definitely informed the placement of certain things
on their anatomy. Uh. They get through get around through
hydrostatic pulses of their tube like bodies as well as
the slime that helps them locomote. Yeah, they have that foot, yes, Yeah,
They've got a little gastropod foot and they sense the
(07:58):
world using two sets of tentacles or feelers on their heads,
so one set detect light and dark. All right, let's
talk about the slime that they have. This this slime
that they they put out, it's it's it's really fascinating
just just from a chemical standpoint. I was reading this article, um.
It was talking about the work of u W bioengineering
(08:18):
professor's pedro Verdugo and Christopher Vinny, and they were working
with the zoology professor Ingrith dere Olsen and this was
this is from But they were looking at the way
slugs use it for for protection, for for locomotion, all
these methods that we're talking about and the but they
were interested in what it was like at a molecular level.
(08:41):
And previously h researchers thought that slug sign was more
like a bowl of spaghetti, just lets of tangled strands
of goo, like somebody blowing their nose continuously into a bowl.
Kind of I know this disgusting, but we're talking about slimes,
so just imagine that that was kind of like the
idea on a on a smaller level. And the more
the more strands, the more tangled, the more mucus is
(09:02):
what they thought. But in these guys show that slug
mucus is not random. It is a highly organized polymetric material.
And when secreted, the polymer absorbs water rapidly up to
a hundred times it's initial volume, So it's kind of
like a you know, just add water kind of a situation.
In fact, this slime is packed in and as granules
(09:24):
inside the body. Uh there's dry mucus in granules, Yeah,
like granules of mucus. And then when they pump it out,
then it activates and then it touches water, and then
it grows into the slime substance. Okay, so this is
why slugs don't soak up too much water and explode
when they crawl across water, because they can control that
action of the granules meeting the water and then expanding. Yeah.
(09:46):
One of the things that I found useful in just
thinking about slime is to not not to think of
it merely as something that is excreted, that is, that
is external to the creature though, I mean, of course
it is, but but to really think of it as
the outer layer of that creature's body. It's really a
part of it. I mean, it's and we're going to
get into all the various uses for it as we
(10:08):
continue here, but the slime is essentially a part of
the creature. Well right, it's just another layer of skin,
so to speak, or you know. Yeah. Um, so here
this is really important though, um this secretion because obviously
they do this for various reasons. But if you were
to pick up a slug and it would feel threatened,
that it would produce a lot of the goo, a
(10:29):
lot of this mucus, and and that's what you get.
You should get a fistful of slime. If you're picking
going around picking up slugs, what's the matter with you? Now,
Some listeners may have done this before and discovered that
if they picked it up and they went to go
wash their hands afterwards, what would happen. Well, when they
tried to get that goo off of their hands, the
(10:49):
slime would actually double in volume or triple because again,
you've got that water and it's it's just gonna make
matters worse. You're trying to wash your hands off, and
the best thing to do is actually not even get
to the water first. Just getta dry towel, wipe it
off as much as possible, and then wash your hands. Yeah,
(11:10):
but I mean he's picking these things up. I mean
the cool thing about that is it shows you the
incredible adhesive properties that it has. Right hands, it's just
incredibly hard to get off. But it gives you a
big clue as to um how they get around, how
they navigate with this. Well. Yeah, and it also shows
it gives you a little insight into how versatile slime
(11:32):
is because on one hand, it's used for locomotion, it's
used about reduce it's about reducing friction so that I
mean basically, the slime the slug or snail is creating
a little road for itself that it can travel um
and in the road that other snails may encounter, and
they're able to tell where and when the last slug
or snail was on that trail, like it's a There's
(11:54):
also a lot of communication going on here, which we'll
get into. But yeah, let's talk a little bit more
about how get around here. Because slugs have no articulate
skeletal systems, so they have to crawl, and they do
this by using complex muscle movements, especially a broad muscular
organ at the base of the snails body known as
the foot, as you said, and these actions are then
(12:14):
aided by the slime that the slug secrete. So as
you have said, um, it does double duty. It can
reduce friction between the snails body and the ground to
let them glide along, but together with the sucking action
of the foot soul, it can help the snail stick
to a surface. So we're talking about the edge of
a knife here. Yeah, yeah, I mean, if you can
find videos are the famously slugs can crawl over the
(12:35):
blade of a razor in their unscathed. Uh slug snails
with large shells can climb up trees carrying this heavyweight
with them in Its no big deal because it's because
of the versatility of the slime. And like I mentioned,
UH the second ago, slugs used slime to communicate with
each other. With each other UM, a slun slugs trail
will contain various important important directional information allows a second
(12:59):
slug to fall. Of a slug is in the mood
to mate, that will be a signal inside of the
slime that it's secreting. So this kind of a mood
slime going on as well. When a when a slug
is putting out some slime in a way it is uh,
it's writing a poem, it's sending out a missive to
the rest of the gastropod world to interpret. And we
(13:21):
will talk in the next podcast about that courtship dance,
which is so incredibly bizarre and beautiful and discussing at
the same time. Now, another thing you mentioned about the
picking up a slug and about when they're threatened, that's
another thing that's another example of mood slime. UM. Many
snails can foam when they encounter a predator or if
they touch something that is repulsive, which I guess is
(13:44):
kind of ironic, but don't encounter substance that they don't dig.
And when they do, they just whip out the slime.
Because again, this is like you know people when someone
says something, you know, kind of mean to somebody and
they get hurt, they say, why don't you grow some skin,
Grow some thick skins so you can deal with that. Well,
that's kind of what this the slug or the snail
is doing here counter something it doesn't like. It grows
(14:04):
that skin, It grows that layer of slime that that
distances itself from the potential dangers of the world. Can
also be distasteful or toxic um in content, so that
if a bird wants to peck at it, it will
soon discover that this is not something it wants to eat.
So that's a good way that it can avoid predators. Um,
it can use it slimes a repelling cord to lower
(14:25):
itself down on the ground from plants. Again, that's stickiness
and the durability of the slime. And this is all
just just one reason why scientists continue to be very
interested in the biomometic possibilities for slime looking at it
and saying, what is there about um about the gastropod
use of slime that we can learn from and then
we can use in our products and our technologies. So
(14:46):
you're talking about possibilities and drug delivery systems, pollutant traps
for sewage treatment plants, water based lubricants, chemical information storage.
I mean, the list goes on and on, Yeah, because
it really is amazing how the slime organizes itself and
helps the slug out here just how versatile was it? Well,
you actually have bubble rafting snails, and this is pretty
(15:08):
pretty amazing. These are These are all aquatic snails and
they what they do is they secrete this the mucus
from their their foot and then they they use this
to create this um, this kind of float that they
they then live under for the rest of their lives.
So it's like a raft, like barnacles stuck to it. Yeah,
a little raft that they live underneath. And you know,
(15:29):
actually this reminds me a bet of the Stephen King story,
the raft in which you had a wooden raft and
there are these teenagers stuck on top of it and
there is grotesque oily blob monster underneath trying to eat them.
You see how all roads lead to Stephen King just
about I mean, he wrote a lot of stuff, so
you know, anything that entered his head. Uh, there's a
good chance that exited as a short story or a
(15:50):
gigantic novel. Um. But but this particular use of the
mucus is really interested because they mucus has bubbles in it,
so that's why it's floating and it serves as this
uh thing that they're anchored to for the rest of
their life. It's really interesting too when you start looking
at why they do this, how they evolved to do this,
and the general idea is that uh ancestors of these
(16:13):
uh bubble rafting snails were using their their hardened slime
to anchor eggs on the bottom of the of the
body of water that they're in. Uh, and this practice
eventually evolved into the use of adding air bubbles to
it and using it as this floatation device that they
depend on. Yeah, that's really cool. And that's that again
at the adhesive property and the ability to have some
(16:36):
sort of flexible movement to that A lot of researchers
are interested in when it comes to healing bones, for instance,
they're trying to figure out how slime and its ability
to harden at times um but also locomote could help
bones better heal. So they're all sorts of really cool things.
The other thing I was thinking about is that it
always comes down to reproductive fitness. So if you see this, uh,
(17:00):
this raft configuration, this gloming on, it's because you know,
the survival of that egg is important to the species.
And we'll talk more about this in the slug Sex podcast.
But it really when you look at the reasons for
a lot of things in nature, it's very interesting to
see how everything's were evolved from around that basic reason. Now,
(17:21):
I was really in researching slugs and snales. I was
really horrified, slash amazed by how successful they are um it,
particularly in areas where they're invasive of course, and they're
invasive a lot of like a lot of the sales
of slugs we up here in North America were introduced.
I'm sure anyone who had who belongs to say a
c S A Communities supported Agriculture group has wound up
(17:44):
with slugs in the kitchen before I have. I see
this is what it's all coming down to. You had
a really bad experience with the slug. Well, this was
like a couple of months ago. I mean, I don't
know when I had quote unquote bad experiences of slugs.
I remember seeing big slugs when as a kid that
none of them ever attacked me or anything. But but
they'll show up, like occasionally they'll hit a ride on
(18:06):
some produce and then they're in your sink and you
have that moment where you think your your house is
being invaded by slugs. And some people's houses are invaded
by slugs and it's disgusting. But who's whose house is
invaded by I I hear things about people who are like, yes,
slugs crawling in my house at night here and Georgia, Yeah,
I think so. Yeah, But um, because they can go
(18:29):
under the door and stuff. It's I mean, they're they're
they're they're squashy, they're squishy, they can they can squeeze.
But anyway, my point being is that they're they're tremendously
great at chomping down produce. They can be quite a pest.
I was reading in this book by Charles C. Man
and this is about Columbus's discovery of the New World
(18:52):
and the biological ramifications of that. But he includes a
couple of accounts in there about attempts to introduce golden
apple snails from Brazil to Taiwan and then also to
the Philippines uh in a in an attempt to create
a caviar business. Both of these failed. H partially look
at the Taiwan example because the Taiwanese really weren't into
(19:15):
the idea of eating cave are. But then you end
up with these uh with these apple snails just out
and about and they're just eating everything. They're eating the
eggs of other creatures, they're eating rice plants. So these
things can be quite the pest when they get out
of control. In fact, one statum I ran across said
(19:36):
that wherever and this is from the University of Florida
or Florida if you will, um, they said that whenever
the plant damage done by snails and slugs is easily observable,
it has been determined that the live weight of the
slugs infesting the area maybe around seventy pounds per acre.
Seventy pounds of slugs. Just imagine it like I've picture
(20:00):
like congealing in the form of like a human. Just
all slug it's but um, but it's an amazing creature
and it's amazingly successful creatures. So there you go. This
is this is what I like to think about um
slugs in your beauty products. And this cracked me up
because in two thousands six Chilean farmers reportedly noticed, and
(20:21):
this sounds like an oil of a leg commercial, they
reportedly noticed visibly smoother skin after handling snails they were
breeding for the French food market. Of course. Yeah, and
this apparently falls in with some very old ideas of Hippocrates.
Of course, he reportedly prescribed a mixture of sour milk
and crushed snails for skin inflammations. So it's it's we've
(20:45):
known for a while that there's something in the slime
that that can help us, that can be beneficial. Well,
it's packed with glycolic acid, any lasting a snail secretion
protects its own skin from cuts, bacteria, and powerful UV rays,
making Mother Nature's venus a primes worst for proteins that
eliminate dead cells and regenerate skin. So I just read
(21:05):
that off a bottle of beauty product. I didn't, But
doesn't it. I mean it's yeah, Well, when you're thing,
when you're buying that booty beauty product. You think you're like, oh,
I'm getting this elegant man made ointment to rub on
on my skin and then I'm better off. But know
what you're really doing is you're stealing a snail or
slugs self defense system. You're you're you're cooping there um
(21:28):
their self defense system, and it's it's it's interesting to
think of it that way. For smith skin, it just
reminds me of like an absolutely fabulous UH episode. Did
you ever watch that? Um? I think it self? Parts
of it I remember being on. I can just imagine
Adina like flying down to Chile and noticing that the
locals have fabulous skin and then starting to put slugs
(21:50):
all over her face. UM, no doubt there's some sort
of cosmetics VP out there that has done that. All Right,
we're gonna take a quick break and when we get back,
we are going to talk about slime hagfish and UH
some of the defenses that these creatures have, including a
stuffing mouthful of slime Gaggy their nemesis. All Right, we're back.
(22:25):
So first off, we're gonna talk about the hag fish,
which is a and arguably a repulsive creature, has no
job bones, has no backbone. Um. If you've ever seen
I believe it was David eden Burrough's Life, I think
it was that that had some fantastic scenes of these
(22:46):
creatures feeding, among other creatures, feeding on a dead whale
on the ocean floor. Uh, and they'll there, that's what
they do. They like to eat decaying animal matter in
the ocean. They'll just bore in to it and then
eat their way back out of the corpse. Yeah, they're
mostly like the vultures of the sea. They do some hunting,
but they're they're basically scavengers and they're an eel like
(23:09):
looking fish. Yeah, blind and that essentially if you've seen
the movie Tremmors, those things that come out of the tremors,
the the graboids, Now those are are essentially hagfish. But
these guys have been swimming in the oceans for three
million years and there are seventy seven species all over
the world. Um, this is cool. It's got a plate
(23:30):
of cartilage studded with two rows of teeth, which it
uses to burrow down into the dead carcasses. Um. It's
only predators are either very large fish whose gills are
too big, clog or mammals which obviously don't have gills
and whose stomachs can easily digest or expel the slime.
So it's out there and it's proliferating. Yeah, I mean
(23:50):
in the slime is key because what it'll do, if
you like, I've seen some footage of fishermen pulling them out,
and when they pull them out, they tie into these
knots they kind of not their body and then start
excreting the slime. And uh, it creates quite a lot
of slime, like clear crisco looking stuff, even when they're
out of the water. But when they're in the water,
(24:10):
of course, as we discussed earlier, what what does what
does slime do? When it encounters more water, it becomes
thicker and thicker, and there's more and more of it.
So something tries to eat a hagfish, say a shark,
it pumps out the slime, and the slime is thick
and and and this viscus and shark suddenly has not
only a mouthful of hagfish, but a mouthful of choking slime. Yeah,
(24:33):
it oozes from hundreds of pores that line their bodies,
and the slime consists of large mucus proteins called muisans
linked together by longer protein threads. So when it mixes
with the seawaters, you say, it massively expands, becoming almost
a thousand times more dilute than other animal mucus. Yeah,
so it kind of leaves the slugs in the dust
there when it comes to its production of mucus. Yeah.
(24:54):
Imagine if humans had disability and someone starts messing with you,
say they grab your arm on the trend, and then
you just extrete out some slime and then that they
can't even get a handle on you. I would go
for that. Would you then feel less sort of disgusted
by slugs if you had the ability to spine your tick?
I don't know. I was thinking about that earlier today,
Like what if humans were slime creatures? And what if
(25:15):
we left trails everywhere we went? What if I don't know,
I guess you know I'd be cool with it? Then
what choice would I have? Right exactly? You'd embrace it?
I don't know. I mean, I'm kind of grossed out
by some of the things humans do just biologically, so
maybe I wouldn't be cool with it. You could be
that lone human covered in slime in the corner. Well,
I would probably be the one that's trying to groom
(25:36):
himself free of slime, and then I would have like
horrible slug skin. You'd have like little rashes on your
skin when you try to lick it off or actually
just get it off with the dry towel. As we know.
All right, So here's the cool thing about these tag
fish is that um, they're hanging out in the ocean.
They're chomping on a fish carcass. All of a sudden,
short comes up fights it. What happens, Well, it's pump
(26:00):
not the slime, right, yes, to the point that there's
so much slime in that shark's mouth that it begins
to convulse and it retreats. So what are their amlets?
Can you think of in the ocean that has such
a wonderfully direct and disgusting defense system. That's skunk ah
underwater skunk. Yes, yeah, actually it is um. And it's
(26:22):
so cool because this flenty hag fish is so confident
that it will just there's video of this, that it'll
just efforts been that it'll just kind of return to
eating again, like oh yeah, another shark just came by
tried to eat me. Yeah. Well, they're pretty pretty simple
creatures in that regard. I mean, they're very There's just
like eating corpses and occasionally sliming a shark, and that's
(26:43):
really all it has going on. And they do hunt
a bit too. There is video of them sticking their
heads into burrows trying to find fish, and then when
they do, it's thought that they choke a fish with
its slime, so they produced the slime. You can't imagine
that if you're in that burrowing, you're in that fish. Uh.
And then they not themselves the lower half of its
buddy body to gain leverage against the burrow and drag
(27:05):
the fish out. Wow. I see. I have no idea
that they ever used their slime offensively. But yeah, yeah,
not as much, right because they're mostly scavengers. But okay,
you're not always going to have that whale carc gets
to feed on, and when times are tough, you turn
to hunting a lot of scavengers. Right, So you taste
you fish, go into a burrow, and that's it. Um.
It also knots itself to help free itself from predators
(27:26):
in even as a way to clear the slime from
its body. Yes, I've seen that too. It kind of
rings itself out like a towel. I mean, not in
the sense that it's removing slime from inside it, but
just sort of like in the process of nodding itself,
it slaws it off kind of like you would if you, yea,
the same way were coming slime, I would just yeah,
we just did a little motion of getting it off
(27:47):
our arms there, all right. So this is not the
only creature obviously in the ocean that loves its slime. Actually,
all fish recovered in slime. Yeah, it's uh, and it's
it's really interesting. They out of the information we found
in this we found on fishing websites where they really
are are even better and better these days about about
(28:08):
trying to encourage fisher fishermen and fisherwomen and anglers in general.
I guess that when you catch a fish and you're
releasing it, you just try not to handle it all
that much because you're gonna wipe off slime, and the fishes,
the slime of the fish is really essential to so
many different functions, as we'll discuss here. One of the
coolest that we ran across, uh, the African lungfish and
(28:32):
the African lungfish is creature that lives in swamps backwaters
of West and South Africa. Um they're carnivores. They eat
frogs and other small fish, but occasionally there's a drought
right and when the when the shallow water that lives
in evaporates, the lungfish secretes us the slime all around
itself and forms that drives into a cocoon. And which
(28:56):
is important to you to note that they have lungs
and they can breathe are so it works in conjunction
with us. Yeah. They can live out of water in
this cocoon for up to a year, though usually it's
not quite that long, yep. And they may hibernate by
chewing into the soil and the debris at the bottom
of a waterway, ejecting mud from the gills as it
burrows down. Pretty cool and it digs one to nine
inches below the surface, then wiggles around to create a
(29:18):
bulb shaped chamber. And then when the chamber is complete,
the fish rest with its nose pointing upward and then
in water, it can survive up to four years in
the state, so pretty much goes into a state of torpor.
So what else does slime do for our fishy frienance. Well,
there's a there's a whole list of things for startist
slime plays in a portant role in the efficiency of
gas transport through the fish's skin. UH. It provides external
(29:43):
protection UH. It makes it externally slippery for larger creatures.
It makes it harder for parasites and pathogens to infiltrate
the fish. It also reduces turbulence, and this is especially
the case with fast moving fish that drag resulting from
small spaces between scales and UH and projecting body parts.
(30:03):
So you cover everything with some slime, everything smoother, the
fish is able to travel faster, more streamlined. Um Slime
is also useful for coagulating particles, providing clean water in
the immediate area around the fish, thus improving the movement
and dermal respiration. So it kind of gathers up the
dirt and allows a freshwater source. Produces toxins. We mentioned
(30:24):
this already with the hag dish producing this the slime
that uses a defensive measure, but you also see this
in lamp freeze and and other slimy creatures. They're able
to use it again as a protective and occasionally offensive weapon.
Uh cocoon formation with the long fish that we already
mentioned feeding. Several fish secrete body slimes to feed their young.
Um Baby discus fish, for instance, feed on an over
(30:47):
a bunus of slime which develops on the sides of
the parent fish at breeding time. So and finally, it
can also be used as an alarm substance or a
nest filding material. So there you go, more facts about
slime that you probably never knew. And I hope that
you have a better appreciation for the slugs in your life.
The hag fish, the African lungfish. Yeah, ultimately a slimy
(31:10):
creature is not nearly slimy so that it can, you know,
shock you or repulse you. It's it's it's far more
complicated than that, involving look, emotion, communication. And you're showing
the picture to me again. Um, I just wanted to
see coming to the merits have changed your mind? I
think you're still there. Um Oh. On a real hated note,
(31:31):
I will say I did a blog post yesterday, uh
titled good question colon how to salt melt the garden slug.
If you're interested in learning about that, go check out
that blog post. It's a It's a really fascinating situation.
It's not just a situation where the salt is is
destroying the slug, even though if that's what it looks
like when a kid puts salt on a slug, but
(31:51):
but ultimately it's drawing all of the all of the
moisture out of the slug. And it all has to
do with the nature of slime and how the slime
ultimately a part of that creature. And I guess you
could vancouish slugs we thought method if you wanted to,
although it's not so great for the ecosystem. Yeah, I
just just just gross. They're better, they're suppose one or
(32:12):
two wouldn't hurt. But there are better ways to keep
slugs away. I'm not advocating slugs sadism, yeah, because really, Yeah,
my thing with with putting salt on the slugs are
already thought they were gross, and if you put salt
on them, it's just a grosser situation. And I don't
want to cause them pain. I just want them to
not be around me. So okay, good to know. All right, Well,
on that note, we're gonna We're gonna skip on the
(32:33):
listener mail today. Maybe we'll do some of the next
couple of episodes. So, indeed, look for our Valentine's Day
episode on the sex life of slugs. It is grotesque
and should be a nice, nice remedy for anyone out
there who's just a little tired of the over commercialized
Valentine's Day nonsense. Well, I would say that there is
(32:53):
some romance. There's some some visual fireworks going on, there's
some romance. There is some romance. There's a sister man's
and sister man's. It's just it's a whole new world
of sexuality that you will discover in the next episode
of Stuff to Bow Your Mind. I think it's her
MAP romance, actually map romance. Yes, the tune in for
them af romance. So in the meantime, if you have
(33:16):
some anecdotes you'd like to share about slugs, snails, slime,
slimy fish, the purposes of slime, slime on the movies,
slime on TV shows. Slime is just part of our culture.
Let us know about it. You can find us on Facebook,
where we are Stuff to Blow your Mind. You can
find us on Tumbler, we're also stuff to blow your mind.
You can find us on Twitter, where our handles blow
(33:37):
the mind. And yes, you can share grotesque photos of
slugs and it'll probably make me wretch, but that's your
right as a listener. You guys know what to do,
all right. If you want to drop a line, you
can do so at Blow the Mind at discovery dot com.
(33:59):
Well more thisss and thousands of other topics, visit how
stuff works dot com.
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