Publication Date:
2015-07-04
Description:
Whereas the predominant shapes of most animal tails are cylindrical, seahorse tails are square prisms. Seahorses use their tails as flexible grasping appendages, in spite of a rigid bony armor that fully encases their bodies. We explore the mechanics of two three-dimensional-printed models that mimic either the natural (square prism) or hypothetical (cylindrical) architecture of a seahorse tail to uncover whether or not the square geometry provides any functional advantages. Our results show that the square prism is more resilient when crushed and provides a mechanism for preserving articulatory organization upon extensive bending and twisting, as compared with its cylindrical counterpart. Thus, the square architecture is better than the circular one in the context of two integrated functions: grasping ability and crushing resistance.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Porter, Michael M -- Adriaens, Dominique -- Hatton, Ross L -- Meyers, Marc A -- McKittrick, Joanna -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2015 Jul 3;349(6243):aaa6683. doi: 10.1126/science.aaa6683. Epub 2015 Jul 2.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Mechanical Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634, USA. mmporte@clemson.edu. ; Evolutionary Morphology of Vertebrates, Ghent University, K.L. Ledeganckstraat 35, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium. ; School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97330, USA. ; Materials Science and Engineering Program, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. Department of NanoEngineering, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. ; Materials Science and Engineering Program, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26138983" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
*Bioengineering
;
Biomechanical Phenomena
;
Computer Simulation
;
Models, Anatomic
;
Printing, Three-Dimensional
;
Smegmamorpha/*anatomy & histology/*physiology
;
Tail/*anatomy & histology/*physiology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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