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Chinese giant salamanders, the largest and longest-living amphibians in the world, excrete a goo from their skin that can be used to seal wounds 鈥� and it is better than聽most medical adhesives available today.

When giant salamanders are threatened or injured, their skin oozes a protein-rich mucus. Shrike Zhang at Harvard Medical School and his colleagues used this mucus to make glue for sticking skin back together after surgeries.

With the medical adhesives currently on the market, there is an important trade-off. Synthetic adhesives are very strong, but not very flexible and give off heat as they bond with the skin that can be damaging, while natural adhesives are more flexible and biocompatible, but not nearly as strong.

To make their glue, Zhang and his colleagues gently scratched the backs of Chinese giant salamanders to trigger mucus secretion. They then collected the white material and freeze-dried into a powder for later use by mixing with water to rehydrate.

鈥淚 think if you happened to have a giant salamander by your side, putting the mucus right on should probably work too,鈥� says Zhang. 鈥淚f you happened to have salamanders surrounding you all the time that might be something to try.鈥澛燭he salamanders are critically endangered in the wild, though millions live in commercial farms.

They tested the strength of the goo on pig skin and found that it was slightly weaker than chemical adhesive but far stronger than the natural kind, while retaining the same flexibility as natural medical adhesive.

In live rats, sealing a small wound with salamander adhesive left almost no scar and allowed the hair to regrow almost immediately. It also did not cause significant inflammation and degraded safely in the body.

Not only does this glue seem to be safe and effective, it鈥檚 renewable. 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 have to kill any animals, you just once in a while very gently scratch their skins to harvest the mucus,鈥� says Zhang. 鈥淚t鈥檚 very sustainable, and you can obtain this adhesive for a long time.鈥�