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We know that any cyclist who pedals in front of another assumes most of the aerodynamic load, investing more effort (power) to reach the same speed. On the other hand, the one behind him takes advantage of his wake, protects himself from the head-on collision with the wind and gets less tired while continuing to follow the same pace as the runner in front of him.
Bert Blocken, professor at the Technical University of Eindhoven and the Catholic University of Leuven, is one of the great specialists who has studied the interactions between air resistance and the movement of cyclists, highlighting the importance of taking advantage of pedaling in the platoon.
In other words, going alone is not the same as going well accompanied, especially if you are riding behind someone else who is making the greatest effort, as their studies reflect.
But what scientists at the University of Exeter discovered is that snails can have behavior similar to that of cyclists to move faster with less effort.
To do this, they placed small colored LED lights on about 450 snails and used ultraviolet paint to track their movements. In this way, they observed that they were able to travel distances of up to 25 meters in 24 hours.
That is, for what snails are, they go faster than we might think and can travel a long way in just one night.
But how are they similar to cyclists? Well, it turns out that the answer is that snails use 40% of their energy producing slime. But, if given the opportunity, one snail chooses to follow a trail of slime left by another, because this way they move with less effort, similar to the streamlined suction tunnel. They follow the slimy trail of other snails in the same way that cyclists take advantage of the wake of those in front.
To illustrate, taking advantage of the rain that fell in Barcelona this week, I was able to photograph these snails that were seen in the garden of the Pedralbes monastery and that were walking around calmly.
