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Subscribe and prepare to root for the slowest athletes on Earth.

In this Niche Scientists minisode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole dive into the bizarre but brilliant world of snail racing—and the scientists who study it to unlock secrets of movement, slime, and survival.

Every summer in England, snails compete in the World Snail Racing Championships. It sounds ridiculous… until you realize researchers are using these races to study animal locomotion, non-Newtonian fluids, and biomimicry.

🐌 Why snail slime is both sticky and slippery
🧪 How snail mucus behaves like a non-Newtonian fluid
🏃‍♂️ How snails move using muscular waves instead of steps
🩹 Why snail-inspired adhesives could revolutionize wound closure and surgery
🤖 How snail movement is inspiring soft robotics for medicine and rescue tech

Scientists from engineering, biomechanics, and ecology use snail racing data to understand friction control, climate adaptation, and even how future robots might crawl through collapsed buildings or blood vessels.

It’s slow science. It’s weird science. And it turns out… it’s incredibly important.

🎧 This episode is part of our Niche Scientists minisode series—short episodes spotlighting the wonderfully specific research quietly shaping the future.

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Subscribe and rediscover a skill humans were never meant to lose.

In this episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole explore natural navigation—the ancient human ability to find direction by reading the land, sea, sky, plants, and animals instead of relying on GPS.

Long before maps and satellites, humans navigated forests and oceans using patterns, movement, and observation. And the wild part? That ability never disappeared—we just stopped practicing it.

🌿 How plants and trees reveal direction through sunlight and wind
🕷️ Why spiders, lichens, and grazing animals act as natural indicators
🌞 How the sun, stars, and seasonal patterns guide movement on land
🌊 How Polynesian wayfinders navigated the open ocean without instruments
🧭 Why navigation isn’t about knowing where you are—but knowing how to move

From reading asymmetry in trees to feeling ocean swells beneath a canoe, this episode reframes navigation as presence, pattern recognition, and attention—not coordinates on a screen.

🎧 Whether you’re an outdoor enthusiast, birder, hiker, paddler, or just someone craving a slower, more grounded way of moving through the world, this episode will change how you look at nature forever.

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🎉 Support us on Patreon to keep the episodes coming! 🪼🦤🧠 For more laughs, catch us on YouTube!

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Subscribe and prepare to learn something you will never un-know.

In this Niche Scientists minisode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole spotlight two researchers whose work sounds ridiculous… until you realize it’s brilliant.

Meet Dr. David Hu and Dr. Patricia Yang, engineers who study fluid dynamics by asking the questions no one else would:

• Why do almost all mammals pee in the same amount of time?
• Why is wombat poop shaped like a cube?
• And how can studying animal waste improve engineering, medicine, and early cancer detection?

🚽 Why mammals over 3 kg empty their bladders in ~21 seconds
🐘 How urethra length turns gravity into an efficiency tool
🧊 The real reason wombat poop is square (and it’s NOT the sphincter)
🏆 How this research earned two IG Nobel Prizes
🧠 Why “weird” science often leads to the biggest breakthroughs

What starts as slow-motion videos of animals peeing ends up influencing biomimicry, manufacturing, plumbing systems, and colon cancer diagnostics.

🎧 This episode proves that curiosity-driven science—even the gross kind—can quietly change the world.

Support the show

🎉 Support us on Patreon to keep the episodes coming! 🪼🦤🧠 For more laughs, catch us on YouTube!