Article on "How Gecko Toes Stick" from 'American Scientist' magazine

[cassandra]

Someone left a pile of recent 'Amercian Scientist' magazines in the break room at work (yes, I work with dorks) and the cover of March/April 2006 issue caught my attention (cute picture of a gecko, from the underside, sticking to glass).

Anywho, it's their cover story for the issue; serious, intense science but very interesting, so I thought I'd pass along the link to the article.

http://www.americanscientist.org/tem.../assetid/49625

[tigerlily]

Cool link, but you have to be an active subscriber to read the whole article. Dang. Looked pretty interesting though.

[cassandra]

Oh dang...I guess I just looked at the first page to make sure the link worked...

The most interesting tidbit from the article (okay, the only part I could understand):

"Theoretically, the 6.5 million setae [that's the microscopic fiberous thingies on geckoes feetses that makes them stick] on a tokay gecko could generate 1,300 newtons of shear force--enough to support the weight of two medium-sized people--based on measurements from single setae. These numbers suggest that a gecko is only attaching 3 percent of its setae in generating the strongest force (20 newtons) measure in whole-animal experiments. Even more surprising, a 50-gram gecko needs less than 0.04 percent of its setae (attached maximally) to support its mass (which requires half a newton of force) on a wall. At first glance, gecko feet seem to be enormously overbuilt by virtue of a safety margin of at least 3,900 percent." --American Scientist, Volume 94

Sticky dudes!

Sorry the link requires access...=P

[Roundabout136]

That's absolutely increadable. Their feet are overbuilt by 3,900 percent? That could mean so many things. Was there a purpose for this trait? Somehow in the evolutionary process that mutation came up, and for some reason, they grew acustom to it. Which is weird becusae its completely unnecessary. Maybe there were giant gecko's someday long before us....