Sticky berries adhere with strength and ease
21. Tendrils enable upward climb: rattan palm
"Rattans, the highly specialised climbing palms of south-east Asia, have stems that are barely thicker than a man's finger. The front tip, from which all growth comes, explores with extremely long, thin tendrils equipped along their length with ne...
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22. Disklike structures adhere to smooth surfaces: Spix's disk-winged bat
"Several of the smallest bats, for instance, use [suction adhesion] to cling to smooth leaves, with disklike structures on wrists and ankles. In the 3.5-gram Thyroptera tricolor of Central America, suction provides the main mechanism; these bats' ...
23. Silk is strong: Darwin's bark spider
"Combining high strength and elasticity, spider silks are exceptionally tough, i.e., able to absorb massive kinetic energy before breaking. Spider silk is therefore a model polymer for development of high performance biomimetic fibers…We ex...
24. Head protected from minor impacts: cassowaries
"A casque or helmet composed of a firm foamlike substance with a heavily keratinized covering is located on the top of the head. The purpose of the casque may be to protect the birds when moving head first through dense forest vegetation or may b...
25. Tentacles adhere underwater: octopus
"Naturally, nothing precludes an organism from using some combination of adhesive mechanisms; and determining relative contributions can be sticky. The sucker of an octopus works by suction almost exclusively." (Vogel 2003:429)
26. Bionic Handling Assistant
The arm contains no steel or iron. It is produced using 3D laser sintering, a form of additive manufacturing. The structural material, polyamide, is compliant, yet strong enough to perform manual lifting, and can also perform delicate procedures. ...
27. Algal turf scrubber
"Algal turf scrubbers are field-sized, water-treatment systems that can extract excess nutrients from streams, canals, and lakes polluted by agricultural, domestic, and some industrial runoff. They use sunlight as their principal source of e...
28. Large ears aid cooling: elephant
"Elephants, too, have huge ears relative to body size, and they are also used for temperature regulation. It has been shown that blood passing through the ears of an African elephant may lose as much as 9˚C of heat, a valuable cooling device in t...
29. Leaves retain air films underwater: water fern
"A novel mechanism for long-term air retention under water is found in the sophisticated surface design of the water fern Salvinia. Its floating leaves are evenly covered with complex hydrophobic hairs retaining a layer of air when submerged...
30. Feet adhere temporarily: aphids
"Thus, in an aerial system, water can act as an adequate glue by a mechanism commonly referred to as 'capillary adhesion.' Aphids appear to use it to adhere to surfaces (Dixon, Croghan, and Gowing 1990). And it almost certainly helps a tree frog r...
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