Cambridge Ideas – Sticky Feet
Ants have incredibly sticky feet. With them they can hang onto ceilings, while carrying 100 times their body weight.
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But if they are stuck down so successfully – how do they ever get them unstuck?? Chris Clemente is studying the mechanisms that ants and other insects (especially cockroaches) use to stick and unstick, and also to walk down as well as up walls. He also considers the applications that this might one day have to develop a ‘supersuper glue’ and to improve the movement of robots.
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