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Scientists Discover What Makes Geckos Stick
Scratch-O-Matic writes "This story at CNN explains how gecko feet are sticky due to an electro-mechanical phenomenon rather than a chemical glue, as had been previously assumed. The gecko is one of just a few animals capable of climbing vertical and beyond-vertical surfaces that are smooth and dry. Researchers have discovered that the secret to the adhesion lies in millions of tiny hairs called
'setae.' Each hair is the width of two human hairs, and contains about 1000 little pads at the end. The pads are so tiny that they actually cling to the surface at the molecular level, due to van der Waal forces. A gecko using all of its setae and pads at the same time could support 280 pounds. Seems to me that his should be easily replicated in the coming age of nanotechnology." Other readers point to the AP story, as carried by Yahoo! and also playing at Salon.
Very timely... Read about this in Scientific American over a year ago! Takes awhile for scientific knowledge to disseminate I guess.....
One my profs works on geckos, he was telling me that even dead geckos stick to walls. Fun for the whole family!
Why is everyone reporting this like it was just discovered?
BBC covered it over two years ago.
Probably what happened is that a major news service hired a new reporter who heard something cool and decided to write about it. But he didn't know it was old news. Like little robots, every other newspaper in the country picked up the story and published it This kind of thing happens with just about every story. It's almost like we have one giant national newspaper.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
For all those wondering why this subject suddenly returned to the limelight, it's due to a paper realased today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (or pnas for those in the know).
Here's a link to the Autumn, et al. article, entitled "Evidence for van der Waals adhesion in gecko setae".