Scientists have developed a vibrating gel that creeps, crawls and slithers just as worms, snails and snakes do. Manoj K. Chaudhury of Lehigh University and his colleagues describe their artificial creepy-crawly--a hydrogel rod made out of the polymer acrylamide and water--in a report published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Good pets?

Polymer Snail Crawls Like the Real Thing