Aquatic versus terrestrial attachment: Water makes a difference

• Petra Ditsche and
• Adam P. Summers

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 2424–2439, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.252

• . For a vacuum (0 MPa) the tenacity developed at a maximal pressure difference would be 0.1 MPa at sea level. However, the pressure measured under an octopus sucker went negative in 35% of the cases and the lowest pressure measured was 0.168 MPa [72]. The same study shows that seawater can sustain

Hairy suckers: the surface microstructure and its possible functional significance in the Octopus vulgaris sucker

• Francesca Tramacere,
• Esther Appel,
• Barbara Mazzolai and
• Stanislav N. Gorb

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 561–565, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.66

• ; octopus sucker; underwater sealing; Introduction An octopus sucker consists of two portions: an upper hollow cup, the acetabulum; and a lower disk-like portion, the infundibulum, located at the attachment face of the sucker (Figure 1a,b). It is known that octopus suckers adhere not only to perfectly

• recently shown for clingfish [3] and abalone molluscs [6], might play an important watertight role in this minimal energy consumption hypothesis [5]. For studying this, we used scanning electron microscopy (SEM) at high resolution to explore the microstructure of different octopus sucker surfaces

• structures observed in the fish are quite similar in size and aspect ratio to the hairs described here in the octopus sucker. In addition, the sole foot epithelium of abalone Haliotis tuberculata is characterised by a dense field of long hairs, here called cilia, that measure 0.2–0.3 µm in diameter [6]. In