Body resists soil adhesion: dung beetle
Body of the dung beetle reduces soil ahesion via non-smooth surface morphology.
"The adhesion forces of soil, which exist when soil is in contact with a solid interface, often make troubles for soil engaging components of vehicles and machines, such as earthmovers, excavator-buckets and bulldozers, and result in the fall of power output. However, the phenomena of soil adhesion disappear when soil-burrowing animals move in soil. Soil animals' such excellent ability of anti-adhesion is partly resulted from their non-smoothness surface morphologies [5], for example, the morphological body surface of dung beetle is of non-smoothness or roughness in micro scales, as shown in Figure 1." (Collins 2004:218)
- Collins, M. 2004. Design and nature II: comparing design in nature with science and engineering. Southampton: WIT.
- Ren, L; Deng, S; Wang, J; Han, Z. 2004. Design principles of the non-smooth surface of bionic plow moldboard. Journal of Bionics Engineering. 1(1): 9-19.
