SILME TIME

Life on Earth would be completely different without slime. Join JD Savage as he squelches into the gloop...

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Slime, gunk, goo. Whatever you call it, are you fascinated or disgusted by the slippery stuff – or a bit of both?

Yes, gloop is gross, but slime has been sold as a toy for almost half a century and is more popular than ever. Some people love making slime and spend hours stretching and squishing it between their fingers. Even famous people seem happy to have buckets of yellow yuck and green gunge hurled in their faces or dumped all over them on TV. Neither solid nor liquid, but somewhere weirdly in-between, it’s no surprise that gunk makes some people gag. Yet many others would love to get seriously slimed. So, if it’s so disgusting, what is its appeal? Could it be that slime somehow... is our friend?

It’s snot what you think

None of us are strangers to slippery slime. Our bodies are full of it. A thick layer of mucus protects your stomach walls and helps food move through your guts. It’s surrounds your eyes and coats your mouth and throat. It shields your organs, stopping them from drying out. In the nose and lungs, snot traps and flushes out unwanted body invaders, such as infectious bacteria, dust and smoke.

If you’re wondering how it got there, many of your body’s tissues produce it. You’ll be most familiar with the stringy stuff from the snot you snort out of your nose. Now, imagine being made to swallow more than a litre of that yucky stuff. Well, sorry to inform you, but you already do just that every day, without even realising it.

Healthy human bodies produce about 1.5 litres of mucus per day. You only really notice it when you have an infection, and it gets thicker, becoming the gross gunk that lodges in your throat and makes you dread peeping in your tissue after a hearty nose blow.