Ask Ms. Jessica Issue 47 – Feeling Sluggish

(The content for Ask Ms. Jessica comes from real questions from real people sent to AskMsJessica@gmail.com)

I have a friend on the track team who seems to be turning into some sort of slug girl. She gets more slimy every day and I’m worried about her. Will she still be able to run? Is she just going to slither around everywhere?

Don’t worry. Your friend will be fine.

First of all, it is very likely she will lose her legs, but that’s fine. Slugs move on one large “foot” by contracting and expanding their body, which is largely done through muscular movement and forced liquid pressurization, similar to the muscular hydrostat we talked about when we talked about tentacles.

Slugs are known for being slow, but that’s only slow relative to their size. The fastest slug ever recorded moved at 2mph. That’s a slow walk for a human, but remember that slugs are only about 10 inches long. The average human walking stride is 30 inches, meaning that your friend, at a brisk slither that could compete with the best slugs in biology, would move at 6mph at a walk. Human running strides are 60inches, so she would be “running” at 12mph, and that’s just an average mathematical estimate.

Remember her biology will be a mixture of slug and human, so she will be able to create a lot more force than a garden variety slug. Human running is essentially repeatedly leaping and catching yourself with your other foot. Normal slugs cannot do that but a human sized slug likely can. This will increase her speed even further.

Not to mention there’s the factor of the mucus that she creates. It will necessarily lubricate any surface she is moving on, allowing her to reach incredibly high speeds, provided that the terrain is smooth.

So, no, I do not think your friend’s position on the track team is in jeopardy. She might have a bit of an interesting time getting adjusted to life without legs, as well as the rest of slug biology, and unfortunately she will likely have to be put into a different class of competitor, so that she is competing with other students without legs, but for the most part if she was a speed demon before she will be a speed demon now.