Gecko’s sticky feet seem to let the little climbing lizards crawl wherever they want. Now researchers have used the gecko feet’s trade secrets to let robots use that climbing power in space. The idea, ...

There’s a crapload of debris orbiting our planet and potentially posing a hazard to our astronauts and our satellites. One estimate says there are 21,000 pieces of space junk larger than 10 ...

Some insects can hold an object 100 times heavier than they are–and they can do it while hanging upside down. For ants and bees, the secret to this power resides in adhesive footpads that clamp down ...

Most animals that walk up vertical surfaces – from ants and spiders to geckos and sucker-footed bats – are able to do so thanks to sticky pads on their toes or feet. Now, researchers analyzing the ...

The gecko’s ability to climb walls and ceilings may seem like a superpower -- a gravity-defying skill that scientists and engineers are trying to re-create in a number of different devices, from ...

A few years ago, physicsworld.com reported the first experimental evidence to explain how a gecko can scurry without fear across even the smoothest of ceilings. The answer lies in the lizards’ hairy ...

So strong is the stickiness of some geckos’ feet that the lizards can hang from a ceiling by a single toe. Despite that clinginess, the forest of adhesive fibers on the underside of each toe stays ...

When I first started my job as a biologist at the University of South Florida, I drove my Jeep to a grassy field, dug up a mound of fire ants and shoveled it into a 5-gallon bucket. Immediately, ...

Geckos are known for their remarkably adhesive feet. In a study published Aug. 12 in the Journal of Applied Physics, researchers describe just how remarkable those feet are. It turns out that gecko ...

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. (The Conversation) – When I first started my ...