Frog Tees

How White’s Tree Frog keeps a grip on things!

Debs on Jan 7th 2009

There's a fascinating story in the Scientific American today by Adam Marcus which takes a closer look at just how the White's tree frog manages to hang on so well:

Biologist Jon Barnes of the University of Glasgow in Scotland, who led the research, used an atomic force microscope (AFM), which can provide images on the scale of billionths of a meter, to scan the feet of White's tree frogs. To the naked eye, the frogs' toe pads appear patterned with flat-topped, hexagonal cells surrounded by grooves filled with mucus. On closer inspection, however, Barnes discovered that the tops were not flat at all but rather were covered by tightly packed "nanopillars," each with a small dimple in the end, which generate powerful friction against the surfaces they contact.