adhere to water
81. Gas-storage chamber controls buoyancy: nautilus
"The body of the mollusc inhabits the very last of a spiralling series of chambers inside the shell. By filling the inner chambers with a mixture of air and water, the nautilus achieves perfect buoyancy, allowing it to rise effortlessly during its...
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Email82. Radiating filaments filter water: fanworms
"Increased surface area is extremely useful to many creatures…The radiating filaments of the fanworm filter the water for food particles: the more water is covered, the more food is found." (Foy and Oxford Scientific Films 1982:24)
83. Leaves channel water: sacred fig
"Leaves are shaped so that water is funneled to run off the tip (called drip tips). Occurs more in understory, shady, humid conditions. An undergrowth study in Ghana showed that 90% of species have drip tips and that drip tips dry within 20 minute...
84. Synthetic solar storage
During photosynthesis, the light reactions result in the splitting of a neutral water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen. This biochemical pathway is quite complex and difficult to reproduce. In addition to untangling these multielectron photoreact...
85. Leaves optimize photosynthesis: giant water-lily
"In still or slowly-moving waters there is one easy way to collect [light]: a plant can float its leaves upon the surface. No plant does this on a more spectacular scale or more aggressively than the giant Amazon water-lily. A leaf first appears o...
86. Underwater roots get oxygen: giant water-lily
"The Amazon water-lily is able to produce such large and strong structures because it can collect an abundance of food through its roots from the mud at the bottom of the lake. But roots need to breathe and the mud at the bottom of Amazonian swamp...
87. Individuals avoid contact: mosquitofish
"We identify three key rules for the social interactions of mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki): (i) Attraction forces are important in maintaining group cohesion, while we find only weak evidence that fish align with their neighbor’s orientat...
88. EvoLogics underwater sensor
EvoLogic developed and patented their Sweep Spread Carrier (S2C) technology to manage the challenging conditions presented by ocean waters. They developed underwater sensors that can transmit frequencies similar to those emitted by dolphins. These...
89. Dew Bank Bottle
Inspired by the fog-gathering technique of the Namib desert beetle, the Dew Bank Bottle is designed to harvest water from the air. Designed by Kitae Pak, the stainless steel, dome-shaped invention resembles the desert beetle's body. The Dew Bank B...
90. NanoSphere® fabric finish
Butterflies don’t take baths. Instead, nano-scale surface structures on their wings repel water and most dirt and also cause dirt particles to be carried away by water. Schoeller Technologies AG of Switzerland created a fabric finish called ...
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