Arthropod Powers Defy Evolution
You may not know the word, but arthropods are all over the place, on land, in the sea, and so on. They comprise most of the animal world, and have an external skeleton, many limbs, a segmented body, and are cold blooded. You have your spiders, insects, scorpions, lobsters, and a whole passel of other things. Let's highlight a few of them, which are being studied for biomimetics (imitation for our benefit). Credit: National Science Foundation (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) That big nose-like thing you see in the butterfly picture that looks like a straw is called the proboscis . It works like a straw, or maybe a sponge, or is that a sensor, or some of all of those things. This is being studied for several applications, including a drug delivery system. Did you know that mosquitoes beat their wings about 800 times a second? (I still swat at the things when I hear that annoying whine.) More impressive is that they make efficient use of their wing strokes