Elephants use their trunks very like a human makes use of their palms: to select up meals and manipulate objects. A brand new examine finds that tiny, specialised whiskers on elephant trunks assist them do it.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Many human innovations are based mostly on issues present in nature. Velcro was impressed by the burrs a Swiss engineer discovered on himself and his canine, airplane wings by birds in flight. A brand new examine of elephant trunks discovered one thing that may very well be helpful, too – specialised whiskers. NPR’s Nate Rott studies.
NATE ROTT, BYLINE: Elephant trunks are extremely versatile.
ANDREW SCHULZ: They will decide up tortilla chips with out breaking them. They will raise up a large barbell. Folks have seen them raise bushes.
ROTT: Andrew Schulz is a researcher on the Max Planck Institute for Clever Programs in Germany.
SCHULZ: I primarily examine animals and supplies and attempt to perceive how we are able to design several types of engineered supplies and robotics based mostly on animal buildings.
ROTT: For about eight years, Schulz has centered on elephants, particularly their trunks, which, very like a human arm, are lined in tiny hairs, solely they don’t seem to be regular hairs.
SCHULZ: A traditional hair, the follicle that it is in – proper? – is simply principally this hair follicle.
ROTT: Nothing particular. Whiskers, although, such as you see in your cat, your canine, or that undesirable rat within the attic…
SCHULZ: They’re on this follicle that has this blood sinus, and it is related to all of those mechanoraceptors.
ROTT: Receptors that detect issues like contact, strain or vibration and convert them into electrical indicators {that a} mind can perceive, conveying info principally to the animal about their environment. Schulz says he typically thinks of whiskers as being sort of just like the sideview mirrors of a automotive.
SCHULZ: So though cats and canines have eyes – proper? – these whiskers are overlaying the blind spots so these animals are usually not going to run into something.
ROTT: For elephants, whiskers primarily prolong and improve their sense of contact, permitting them to delicately decide up that tortilla chip with out damaging it. However to grasp how these whiskers do this, Schulz and his collaborator determined to take a look at them on the microscopic stage.
SCHULZ: And it truly confused us fairly a bit.
ROTT: The bottom of the whiskers had been stiff.
SCHULZ: Like, nearly as stiff as plastic.
ROTT: They usually’re hole with these little channels within them, like the within of a horse hoof or a ram’s horn. However then, as you progress down in the direction of the tip…
SCHULZ: It is extremely gentle, so gentle as rubber, after which that’s utterly dense. And one of many issues that we expect is that this gradient construction of the whiskers helps them know precisely the place one thing is touching alongside the size.
ROTT: Schulz says the findings, printed within the journal Science, develop our understanding of contact and may very well be helpful for engineers attempting to make new mechanical instruments or robots. For instance, he says, consider a future robotic on the grocery retailer attempting to select a ripe fruit.
SCHULZ: If we take one thing like a bio-inspired whisker, you’ll be able to have a gentle, delicate faucet so that you just’re in a position to not harm the fruit.
ROTT: Whereas the stiff base conveys information about its ripeness, which I suppose beats squeezing the heck out of an avocado and hoping no one sees you set it again. Nate Rott, NPR Information.
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