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Listen, Humpty Dumpty, I hate to break it to you, but while there are certain medical situations where a bandage is good enough to stick you back together again, this is not one of them. Sometimes, even the best intentions (and combined efforts of the reigning monarch’s horses and men) aren’t enough. Please, go consult with the slug mucus experts immediately.
That’s right: slug mucus. When the Dusky Arion slug is threatened, it secretes a mucus that makes it next to impossible for anything to peel the gastropod from its perch. That’s bad news for hungry predators, but for biomedical researchers it presented an irresistible opportunity.
In a study published Thursday in Science, researchers showed how a new tough adhesive inspired by slug slime could work even in the most slippery, blood-soaked situations.
The slug mucus works because it has positively charged particles that help bind it to whatever surface the slug happens to be crawling on. So researchers created a gel made primarily of water—a hydrogel—with similar properties. The resulting adhesive sticks to a surface in three ways. First, through the positively charged particles that stick…
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