Advertisment

Cat-tongues inspire new technology?

If you have ever been licked by a cat, you have experienced just how scratchy their tongues are. If you have not had the pleasure, it is much like being licked by a piece of Velcro. In fact, Mechanical Engineer Alexis Noel (Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta) recently described the tiny claw-like structures on a cat's tongue after observing a cat getting its tongue stuck on a blanket. Her research team decided to create 3D prints of a cat's tongue. Some applications of this discovery could include soft robots designed to better grip objects, new designs for hairbrushes (have you ever seen a cat's hair out of place? I don't think so), or more efficient methods to clean debris out of wounds. Although I would prefer a soft cotton ball myself.
Source:
LiveScience

More like this

A camouflaged giant Australian cuttlefish. Image from LiveScience; Credit: Sarah Zylinski, Duke University Could you imagine artificial skin capable of quickly changing colors to communicate or hide? Scientists have been testing ways to mimic the skin of cephalopods like squid, octopuses and…
Building 3D images gets trickier with objects bilions of times smaller. (courtesy Electric-Eye on Flickr) Let's start with a number, by chance a palindrome: 1441. Imagine taking that many photographs of a single object, a soccer ball, say - obsessively capturing it from every angle to expose all…
“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” -Niels Bohr One of the most amazing recent technological innovations is the advent of 3D Printing, where any shaped or textured object can be accurately reproduced with the right software and printing materials. The things…
"Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help." -May Sarton It's unbelievable how much more amazing the world becomes in slow-motion. You've probably seen some high speed cameras that shoot at astounding frame rates, such…