Geckos are famous for their ability to scale vertical walls and even hang upside down, and now scientists understand more about how the expert climbers can pull off these gravity-defying feats: Geckos can quickly turn the stickiness of their feet on and off, a new study finds.
Gecko toes are well-studied and their sticky properties have inspired some incredible technology, such as stitch-free ways to seal wounds and sticky handheld paddles that may help soldiers scale walls someday. For the past decade, researchers have been developing synthetic adhesives with nanoscale fibers designed to mimic bristly gecko toes.
But new research on the subtleties of gecko adhesion shows that nature is still outpacing scientists in the lab.
Geckos can stick to surfaces because their bulbous toes are covered in hundreds of tiny microscopic hairs called setae. Each seta splits off into hundreds of even smaller bristles called spatulae. Scientists already knew that the tufts of tiny hairs get so close to the contours in walls and ceilings that the van der Waals force kicks in. This type of physical bond happens when electrons from the gecko hair molecules and electrons from the wall molecules interact with each other and create an electromagnetic attraction.
Credit : Live Science
Picture Credit : Google
