When garden snails (Helix aspersa) eat colored paper, they poop colored feces, which designer Lieske Schreuder is hoping to use as the material for colorful tiles.


The snails Schreuder keeps happily chow down on paper and poop out the same color as the paper they devour. Schreuder grinds and mixes the feces, the presses them into molds to dry. She has been making semi-manufactured tiles and is working on developing a sort of snail poop linoleum. However, snails tend to produce this fecal matter at, well, a snail's pace. It takes six days for seven snails to produce six grams of material.

Lieske Schreuder [via Inhabitat]