Sticky berries adhere with strength and ease
1. Sticky berries adhere: Australian mistletoe
"As a group, the Australian mistletoes have developed a rather more specialised system of transport than that employed by their European relative. One particular bird, the mistletoe bird, eats little other than mistletoe berries. There are so many...
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Email2. Rapid digestion deals with diet of sticky berries.
"As a group, the Australian mistletoes have developed a rather more specialised system of transport than that employed by their European relative. One particular bird, the mistletoe bird, eats little other than mistletoe berries. There are so many...
3. Sticky berries adhere: European mistletoe
"The only European mistletoe is the strange twin-leaved parasite that once played an important part in human fertility rites, perhaps because in winter its leaves remain green and visibly alive when those of the tree on which it grows have all fal...
4. Eggs adhere in and out of water: midwife toad
"After the pair lays and fertilizes strings of twenty to sixty eggs, the father thrusts his legs through the egg mass. The sticky egg strings adhere to him, and he stumbles around for the next few weeks with the eggs entwined around his thighs and...
5. Insects use one material for several purposes.
Nature’s packages are designed from the get-go to return to natural cycles. There’s also an inherent multi-functionality in nature’s materials that we have yet to master. Take the seven-layered candy wrapper, for instance. The “75-gauge po...
6. Dietary choices fight oxidative stress: migratory songbirds
"Bug-chomping songbirds have been discovered doing something remarkable before migrating south for the winter: They switch, awkwardly, to berries rich in antioxidants. "The dietary change has less to do with fattening up and more to do wit...
7. Sticky proteins serve as glue: mammals
"Bioadhesion may be defined as the state in which two materials, at least one of which is biological in nature, are held together for extended periods of time by interfacial forces. In the pharmaceutical sciences, when the adhesive attachment is t...
8. Silk threads adhere underwater: marine amphipod
"The discovery of a novel silk production system in a marine amphipod provides insights into the wider potential of natural silks. The tube-building corophioid amphipod Crassicorophium bonellii produces from its legs fibrous, adhesi...
9. Threads adhere underwater: sea cucumber
"Patrick Flammang of the University of Mons, Belgium, is studying the sea cucumber. The sea cucumber, a relative of the starfish, protects itself from predators by ejecting, in a matter of seconds, fine, sticky threads that entangle an attacker an...
10. Sticky hairs trap insects.
"A few leaves, however, have been turned into active traps. Sundews grow in European bogs and marshes. Three-quarters of the family live in western Australia.... The leaves of all are covered with hairs that on the outer margins may be half an inc...
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