Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

.jp. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

This is Scientific Americans' 60-second science. I'm Karen Hopkins. This will just take a minute.

Why did the tiny nematode worm cross the road? Well, for all the usual reasons. But a more

interesting question is, how did it make the crossing? Turns out, it may have hitched a ride inside

a slug or other invertebrate. That's according to a study in the

journal BMC ecology. Nematodes are about a millimeter long, and they're often found on decomposing

fruits or rotting plants, where they feast on the resident bacteria. But when that food source is

exhausted, how do these diminutive diners make their way to the next meal, which could be in a

mulch pile a major

trick of several yards away. To find out, researchers hit the compost heap, and they collected

some 600 slugs and 400 centipedes, spiders, beetles, flies, and locusts, and they found that

the innards of slugs, centipedes, and woodlice, are littered with live worms, that the larger

creepy crawlies accidentally

ingested as they snacked. But what becomes of these itinerant intestinal interlopers? To solve that

mystery, the researchers exposed 79 slugs to more than a million nematodes that had been tagged

with a fluorescent marker. And they saw that the worms not only survive a southbound trip through a slug's guts,

they emerge, none the worse for where they've been, when their ride takes a bathroom

break. Sure, a chugging slug isn't exactly high-speed rail, but its bacteria-filled belly

...