Ant mandibles, spider fangs and scorpion sting tips are made of special materials that deliver sharpness for penetrating prey that the limited forces of their small muscles won’t otherwise allow, according to new University of Oregon research.
That knowledge won’t ease the pain of puncture in human skin, but it may be useful for designing new precision cutting tools, said Robert Schofield, lead author of a paper published Month XX in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.
Schofield’s team, which included 15 current and former undergraduate and graduate students from the UO and Lane Community College, used miniature testing machines to explore the sharp tools of such small organisms as ants, bristle worms, scorpions and spiders. In all, the team completed 1,500 hand-positioned measurements on 150 organisms from 10 different species.
The sharp tools contain heavy element biomaterials, as the research team labeled them. They are enriched with zinc and manganese.
“Using atom probe tomography, an advanced type of microscope, we observed the distribution of zinc and proteins in ant teeth at subnanometer scale, which helped us understand why these cutting ‘tools’ are so strong,” said Arun Devaraj, a materials scientist who applied the specialized atomic probe tomography techniques developed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
They also represent a third class of structural biomaterials, different than the plain organic materials found in claws and fingernails and...
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