Snail Slime Soap, Anyone?

Damien Desrocher used to be an air force computer technician, until he decided to raise snails (Scientific name: Gastropoda; phylum: Mollusca) – 60,000 of them! – for their slime. 

Since December, the 28-year-old from France uses the snail mucous – it is supposedly beneficial for its anti-aging properties – to make snail slime bars for his new soap business, Les Escargots Desrocher.

He says he extracts the slime by tickling the snails, which he says is harmless.

 

Although quite uncommon in Western cosmetics, snail mucus has become a more common ingredient elsewhere, especially in Korean beauty products and widely used in facials due to their regenerative and moisturizing properties. 

It is said that the glycolic acid and elastin in a snail's secretion protects its own skin from cuts, bacteria, and UV rays, making it a great source for proteins that eliminate dead cells and regenerate skin.

Worth noting: This isn’t an excretion that comes out whenever the snail moves, but rather a substance that's excreted when the snail is under "stress". 

Desrocher aims to produce 3,000 snail slime soap bars in his first year of production.

Snail slime is not as strange as you may think. Stranger ingredients have been used in cosmetic and personal care products. Such as fish scales, sheep grease, bird poop, bull semen, placenta, bee venom, whale vomit (ambergris) and crushed beetles (cochineal beetles).