Sticky berries adhere with strength and ease
1. Sticky berries adhere: Australian mistletoe
"As a group, the Australian mistletoes have developed a rather more specialised system of transport than that employed by their European relative. One particular bird, the mistletoe bird, eats little other than mistletoe berries. There are so many...
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2. Sticky berries adhere: European mistletoe
"The only European mistletoe is the strange twin-leaved parasite that once played an important part in human fertility rites, perhaps because in winter its leaves remain green and visibly alive when those of the tree on which it grows have all fal...
3. Eggs adhere in and out of water: midwife toad
"After the pair lays and fertilizes strings of twenty to sixty eggs, the father thrusts his legs through the egg mass. The sticky egg strings adhere to him, and he stumbles around for the next few weeks with the eggs entwined around his thighs and...
4. Sticky proteins serve as glue: mammals
"Bioadhesion may be defined as the state in which two materials, at least one of which is biological in nature, are held together for extended periods of time by interfacial forces. In the pharmaceutical sciences, when the adhesive attachment is t...
5. Threads adhere underwater: sea cucumber
"Patrick Flammang of the University of Mons, Belgium, is studying the sea cucumber. The sea cucumber, a relative of the starfish, protects itself from predators by ejecting, in a matter of seconds, fine, sticky threads that entangle an attacker an...
6. Eggs adhere in seawater: cuttlefish
"The eggs of [cuttlefish] have sticky surfaces that enable them to adhere to cavities in the deeps of the sea." (Yahya 2002:112)
7. White blood cells adhere closely: mammals
"Dr. Shasha Klibanov, Dr. Jonathan Lindner, and graduate student Jack Rychack of the University of Virginia are studying how leukocytes bind at high speeds to areas of infection. Physicians want to use microbubbles in combination with ultrasound t...
8. Blood carries oxygen in varied conditions: human
"Nature has evolved in ways that, at the molecular scale, make inventive and elegant uses of chemistry. To take an example more or less at random, the use of allosteric effects by haemoglobin to fine-tune the protein's affinity for oxygen in diffe...
9. Tendrils enable upward climb: rattan palm
"Rattans, the highly specialised climbing palms of south-east Asia, have stems that are barely thicker than a man's finger. The front tip, from which all growth comes, explores with extremely long, thin tendrils equipped along their length with ne...
10. Head protected from minor impacts: cassowaries
"A casque or helmet composed of a firm foamlike substance with a heavily keratinized covering is located on the top of the head. The purpose of the casque may be to protect the birds when moving head first through dense forest vegetation or may b...
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