Have you ever wondered how a slug drinks water? @cirruslyyesterday, a Tiktoker recently raised the attention of the online crowd about the above question.
She shared a video of herself confessing that she had just learned how a slug drinks water. Though she looked a bit disturbed too.She mentioned that she would “never be the same.” Check out The video that’s almost similar to the video that made TikTok left stressed.
The clip provides the chance to witness one of the rarest ways a creature would drink water. While passing the drop of water, the slug absorbs the whole drop of water into its body and swallows its head and antenna. Yet it’s still doubtful if this is how a slug drinks water.
A comment to the TikTok video claimed to see something wrong with the footage. The comment states that it is not how a snail or a slug drinks water. It could mostly be a snail that got scared, not knowing that the water was there.
Let’s get to know the truth about how this creature gets hydrated.
Snails do have a completely different way of drinking water compared to ours. They can drink water with their mouths, yet with the evolution of their species, they came up with a relatively efficient method called contact rehydration.
It works so that when the creature needs a drink, it flattens them towards the water and then absorbs the water with skin cells.
A prior study was made by researcher D.J. to study the phenomenon that adds an extracellular marker known as “inulin” to observe how the water gets absorbed. Surprisingly the inulin was also absorbed with
It implied that snails don’t use the process of osmosis to absorb water ( the primary method of water traveling in and out of cells by a process where water gets diffused by a semipermeable membrane(.
The conclusion was that the snails didn’t absorb the water, but the water was traveling around the cells. This makes the videos more understandable.
Also, the researchers discovered that snails and slugs are capable of changing their skin permeability.
Finally, it’s considered that when a snail wants to drink water, it broadens the gap between its cells so more water can flow into the body in a shorter time.