Snails Can Make Their Slime Sticky, Slippery, Foamy or Hard Depending on Their Needs. Here’s How They Tweak Their Multipurpose Mucus

The critters can alter the proportions of calcium and collagen in the versatile substance, which changes the protein structure. The different textures can help snails glide, climb or protect themselves

August 27, 2026 4:04 p.m.

a snail on tree bark — The studied species, brown-lipped snails, are native to Europe. MPIKG

Snails are famous for their slime, leaving trails of it wherever they go. But this mucus does more than make a mess. It’s a multipurpose tool whose texture can be tweaked to be slippery, sticky, foamy or even hard depending on the needs of the mucus master.

Now, scientists say they’ve figured out how land snails manipulate their slime. The shell-dwelling critters can change the proportions of collagen and calcium to alter their mucus’ mechanical properties, researchers report in a study published August 6 in the journal Science. The findings could help pave the way for all sorts of new, useful materials.

“Snail mucus may seem unremarkable at first glance, but it is an incredibly versatile material,” says study co-author Franziska Jehle, a biochemist at Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Germany, in a statement. “The fact that the snail can specifically alter the properties of its mucus using the same basic building blocks is what makes it so fascinating for research.”

For the study, Jehle and colleagues went out on rainy days in Germany to collect brown-lipped snails, also called common ribbon or grove snails, which are native to Europe, reports Ari Daniel for NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Then, the researchers put the critters in different scenarios so they would produce five different types of mucus.

Letting the snails roam around in a glass bowl left behind a trail of slick, lubricant mucus, while gently detaching the gastropods from terrarium walls resulted in globs of sticky, adhesive mucus. Prodding the creatures’ shells made the animals secrete two types of defensive slime: one foamy and another yellow and thick. The team also collected hardened mucus membranes, called epiphragms, that snails use to cover their shell openings during hibernation.

Analyzing the mucus varieties’ molecular makeup revealed that each is made of largely the same types of proteins, but the amounts differ based on the slime’s purpose. For instance, the lubricant mucus is 0.3 percent protein while the thick, yellow defense mucus is about 4 percent protein. The main structural protein is collagen VI, the team found, which is well known for roles in human skin, bones and joints.

What’s more, looking at the slimes with a high-powered microscope and with a laser revealed that calcium content also depends on mucus type.

“The more collagen and calcium were present, the stiffer, more cohesive and sticky mucus became,” study co-author Mariella Gabler, a physical chemist at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, tells NPR.

Calcium ions—electrically charged atoms—can interact with proteins and change the slime’s density, the team found. The element seems to be stored as granules of calcium carbonate in the snails’ mucus-secreting tissue, so the gastropods can add calcium to the substance as needed. The grains can donate calcium ions for wet mucus varieties or serve as a mineral precursor for dry mucus types, like the epiphragm.

“Calcium is often associated with hard, mineralized tissues such as shells and bones,” says Victor Ajisafe, a biomaterials scientist at the University of Texas at El Paso who wasn’t involved in the study, to Science News’ Jake Buehler. “But here it appears to have a much broader materials function.”

Quick fact: Saving snails

In the early 1990s, scientists suspected that the greater Bermuda land snail had gone extinct. In 2014, however, experts found a small group of the creatures in Bermuda’s capital. They were carefully bred, and earlier this year, conservationists announced the species was safe from extinction after releasing more than 100,000 individuals into the wild.

Indeed, the work highlights how “versatile” both calcium and collagen can be, Ali Miserez, a biomaterials researcher at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore who wasn’t involved in the study, tells Chemical & Engineering News’ Anirban Mukhopadhyay.

The substances’ roles in snail mucus “beautifully exemplify how living organisms optimize the resources at their disposal,” he says. “It’s quite appealing that fine-tuning calcium and other ions identified [in the study] and their interactions with biomolecular components could guide production of materials as different as an adhesive and a lubricant.”

Humans employ adhesives and lubricants, too. The insights gained from snail mucus could inspire environmentally friendly products like adhesives to help heal wounds or lubricants to aid in drug delivery.

“Natural materials achieve an enormous variety of functions with just a few building blocks,” study co-author Peter Fratzl, director at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, says in the statement. “Understanding the principles behind this is of great importance for the development of sustainable materials.”

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