I’m real tired of “strongest material” being thrown around. As a welder turned machinist, “strong” doesn’t mean much of anything to me. Aluminum is plenty “strong” but it’s softer than some woods. Tungsten carbide is harder than a coffin nail but you can chip it by looking at it funny sometimes. Kevlar is plenty tough, but it isn’t hard or particularly flexible. There isn’t any super material that will ever do all the things “the best” and throwing around meaningless titles for clickbait feels childish at best and exploitative at worst.

What does this tell us of the teeth that your average escargot enjoyer has?

The mineral in question (goethite - yup, named after the poet Goethe) is iron III oxide and hydroxide. It’s 5~5.5 hardness in the Mohs scale, so it’s softer than glass. The snail teeth is probably combining the goethite strains with proteins to make it so hard. I wonder if we couldn’t sub the proteins with kevlar or another para-aramid to create something similar.

Sounds like a good opportunity for anyone who has ever wanted to be a snail farmer.

Queue extinction of snails