How Snails “See” an Invisible Trail Introduction- The way that snails can “see” an invisible trail is through a process where they crawl along and leave behind a chemical that is deposited by the snail in its mucous trail, during the process pheromones are used, and researchers are testing their hypothesis to see if it is true or not. Point 1- There is a “concentration macro gradient hypothesis” that basically states that as a snail crawls along on a surface, they leave behind a chemical that is deposited from them in their mucous trail. Point 2- During the process of when snails leave chemicals behind in their trails, pheromones are used, which is a type of chemical that is left behind by an animal such as a snail. Point 3- Researchers …show more content…
I still remember a day when I was younger and I was at my grandma’s house and I seen a snail. I always see snails and think, oh, it’s just a snail. Sometimes we overlook the purposes that a snail serves for the ground and the animals around them like earthworms, and us. Snails have the capability of “seeing” an invisible trail. It seems odd to think that a snail can “see” an invisible trail, but they can. The way that snails can “see” an invisible trail is through a process where they crawl along and leave behind a chemical that is deposited by the snail in its mucous trail, during the process pheromones are used, and researchers are testing their hypothesis to see if it is true or …show more content…
The concentration gradient- (where the concentration is higher the closer you get to the snail that left the chemical behind and is lower the farther away you get from the snail) was decided to be reversed by the researchers to see what would happen to it. What happened was that the snail followed the correct trail of polarity where they choose the higher concentration that would be closer to the snail that left the deposit behind instead of choosing the lower concentration. The snail in the experiment did not follow the experimentally applied trail polarity. The results that they got from the experiment that they conducted do not match their “concentration macro gradient hypothesis” that they proposed before of trail polarity in snails. “Researchers attempted to test this hypothesis by experimentally reversing the concentration gradient -- but, unexpectedly, the snail followed the original (correct) trail polarity and not the experimentally applied trail polarity!” “These results do not support the concentration macro-gradient hypothesis of trail polarity in