Science sometimes has a beautiful aesthetic side-effect to it, which was also the case in this scientific research which tried to find out how lungworms get from snails to dogs. As these parasites originally live on snails, researchers from the Ecology department at the University of Exeter installed hundreds of LEDs and put UV paint on garden snails to track their movements at night. Lead by Dr. Dave Hodgson, the team recorded it all on tape, and played as a time lapse video. Besides answering some questions, the nocturnal snail movement made a truly surreal and beautiful sight.
The lungworms got the scientists’ attention due to their fatal effect on dogs: the research aims to clarify how these parasites make it from snails to pets. Unfortunately, many dog owners have never even heard of the disease.
via: hungeree, thisiscolossal
