adhere OR attach
51. Caterpillars roll leaves: Striglina scitaria
(Referring to an illustration) "Leaf rolling technique of the caterpillar Striglina scitaria. The larva rolls the leaf around itself with the aid of contracting silk threads." (Pallasmaa 1995:49)
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52. Beak holds fish: puffin
"These puffins sport beaks that look as if they have been painted for a carnival…It is able to carry as many as 20 fish in its beak by holding them with its tongue against the serrated upper mandible." (Foy and Oxford Scientific Films 1982:...
53. Glue sticks underwater: giant water bug
"Using bodily secretions, the female [giant water bug] glues the eggs to her mate's back." (Crump 2005:52)
54. Resisting shearing forces: limpets
"Stefan adhesion. This particular form of adhesion works best against shearing loads…I know of no demonstrated case in which Stefan adhesion is the exclusive mode of attachment, but one suspects its involvement when, as Crisp (1960) showed,...
55. Pigments provide strength: fungi
"Melanin pigmentation of rock-inhabiting fungi confers extra-mechanical strength to the hyphae that are then better able to grow into crevices (Dornieden et al., 1997; Sterflinger and Krumbein, 1997)." (Gorbushina 2007:1619)
56. Attachments cling to intestinal wall: pork tapeworm
"A typical species, such as the pork tapeworm (Taenia solium), consists of an anterior region known as the scolex, armed with suckers and sometimes hooks, too, for attachment to its host's internal intestinal wall…" (Shuker 2001:166)
57. Mucus glues sand and rock: marine worms
"The colonies built by Sabellaria worms on seashore rocks look like very untidy honeycombs. The worms construct tubes of sand grains stuck together with mucus."This surface of a colony of Sabellaria tubeworms (above and left) looks like an untidy ...
58. Leaves glued together: grass trees
"This country [southwestern Australia] is also one of the headquarters of the grass tree…It is neither a grass nor is it a tree. It is a distant relative of the lilies. But it does have very long narrow leaves that resemble grass, and they ...
59. Suckers allow fine attachment: octopus
"William Kier of the University of North Carolina is studying the rows of muscular suckers along the arms and tentacles of octopi. Octopus suckers' tiny projections called denticles are 3-micrometer-diameter pegs that provide more intimate contact...
60. Squeezing larvae provides glue: weaver ants
"Another insect tool user is the weaver ant (Oecophylla smaragdina), which makes nests by rolling up leaves and then gluing the sides together with silk. Although it is the adult ants that do this, only the larvae produce silk, so how is the proce...
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