The physics of Animals

Ok, today I have a new interesting subject. I've done some research about physic and I fall into the kingdom of animals. I've found three animals that are using physic daily. The first one, everyone knows it, I'm talking about the gecko. The second one is the mimic octopus. Finally, the tired one has a superpower that everyone wants to have when you' are a kid. The holder of this power is the Basilisk lizard. 

Let's talk about the gecko, with its strange paws that allow him to walk on the window or just upside down. The principle behind this it's called the law of Van Der Waals. The law talks about an electrical link between two molecules or atoms. If we zoom on the paw of the gecko, we can see that they are full of macroscopic hair, crowned by a smaller part called a spatula, big as two hundred nanometers. Orient in the right angle, the spatula will do an electrical link with the contact surface and this only spatula has a resistance of two hundred micro-newton. So, if we consider that the gecko has more than seven million of these spatulae, the gecko has a resistance of 130 kg, is 2600 times its weight. Those means that the gecko can raise his own weight with only one finger!

The second animal is the mimic octopus. She uses perfectly two power, the metamorphose and the ability to change the color of his skin. Depending on the color of their pigment, chromatophores are termed melanophores (black), erythrophores (red), xanthophores (yellow), or leucophores (white). The distribution of the chromatophores and the pigments they contain determine the color patterns of the octopus. That means that the mimic octopus can change the color of his skin by combining several pigments to obtain a camouflage adapted with the circumstance. Let's talk about his capacity to metamorphose his skin. To start, it doesn't obey any principles of physic but it's really cool. An important thing to know is that the body of the octopus is basically only made of muscle so when she went to take a specific form to hide from a potential threat, she contracted her muscle and all her body going to change of appearance. 

Finally, de third animal of this blog, the Basilic lizard. His superpower it's to run on water. he can do that because of his particular back paws. in general, the area contact of his paws is 5cm2 combinate with his weight of 100g and a speed of 10 km/h he creates a bubble of air under his paws and he removes it before the bubble explode. The science behind it's a combination of morphology and the law of Van Der Waals. The law said that each particle have a link between them, including the water so, when the lizard com with full speed on the water, his paws are going to make a circle form and on the surface of the water and then le surface tension will support the weight of the lizard just enough to give the Basilisk time to remove its leg. Another point really cool, the Jesus Christ lizard runs on water to escape predators.

 
 I hope you learned more about these animals and that my explanation was clear and easy to understand.

Thank you for reading my blog and see you next time.