Smart snails use others' trails

Professor Mark Davies on the trail of some of the smart snails

Snails may not be as slow as they look when it comes to using their brains, researchers at Sunderland University have found.

A study of marine snails found they cleverly saved energy on trips by following each others' mucus trails.

By doing this they only had to create a fraction of the mucus needed without a trail - extending the time they could hunt for food or a partner.

The findings will be published in a science journal on Wednesday.

The research was conducted off the South Tyneside coast by Professor Mark Davies, who has been studying snails for the past 10 years, and masters student Janine Blackwell.

They spent several months researching the marine snails and measuring the thickness of their trails.

Professor Davies said: "If it was a fairly new trail the snails didn't have to lay much mucus, but if it was a weathered trail then they had to lay more.

"How it knows we have no idea but the animal seems to be recreating the profile of the trail as originally laid."

He said the findings, to be published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences journal, more than likely applied to all species of snail.