Snail’s Long Jump

The snail’s body can be divided into three parts from front to back.

1. The first part is the soft body. The front end holds the eyes on the antenna.
2. The middle part is attached to the shell. In fact, this is the heaviest part of the snail even when the body is fully stretched out.
3. The last part, which we can call as tail is as long as the front part.

Since snails do not have legs to jump, they use a sticky substance on which they ’sail’, literally.

1. The snail estimates the distance between two stalks and checks if it can do that long jump without falling down.

2. Then he moves as much as the first part as possible.

3. As the first part is settling down, the second part is moved.

4. Until now the tail is still stuck to the previous stalk for safety.

5. Once grip for the first two parts is established, the last part is released.

6. The last part is also pulled to the destination stalk.

Thus our hero can move freely from one branch to another provided the distance is sligthly lesser than the full stretched body length (just for those who want to derive the mathematical formula.)