Conduction of Signals in the Hawkmoth

The ability to quickly maneuver through a variety of environments requires a central nervous system that can rapidly transfer sensory and motor signals. The neck connective, a bottleneck in the information traveling from the brain to the thorax, is being sectioned and imaged using transmission electron microscopy. These incredibly high resolution images show that, among […]

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The convergent evolution of blinking in mudskippers and tetrapods

Approximately 360 million years ago, tetrapods colonized the terrestrial environment. This water-to-land transition is marked by a suite of behavioral and morphological adaptations. Among these was the origin of blinking—the occlusion of the eye by one of more membranes. Blinking behaviors cover the cornea is a fluid film, which is important for epithelial cell health, […]

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Gecko adhesive hairs gets stickier the faster they slide

Even geckos encounter perturbations and environments that can challenge their ability to stick. The hairs of a gecko’s foot are composed of dry, hard keratin. Classic physics predicts dry, hard solids to have frictional forces that decrease at the onset of sliding (kinetic friction is less than static friction). We discovered that gecko adhesives actually […]

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