Few years down the line you wouldn’t imagine army personnel dressed in green camouflage suits. It could just be sturdy fish scales. Now this is completely out of the box! Apart from having seen their swim strokes, joked about their bulgy eyes and giggled over the way they grabbed those food bits, we haven’t noticed much about the bunch of fauna that we’ve trapped in our fish aquarium. But the folks at MIT had something more to unveil about the fishes. It’s not the oils they secret, but the scales that do the work of shielding them from hungry and hostile fish-folk. To supplant their stand, researchers reported that the light, multilayered design of its scales has helped Polypterus senegalus survive for whopping 96 million years.
Also known by the name Dinosaur Eel (which 10000 times simpler than its bio-name!)is as long as 40 cm, has multiple layers of scales that nullifies the energy of a strike along with debarring penetration to the soft tissues below. It does go without saying that geeky guys at MIT went a little further and took nano-scale measurements to look at several scales that were harmlessly removed from a living fish. Spread over four layers these scales are about 500 millionths of a metre thick (My good God!) the “Energy-dissipating Mechanisam” as they proudly call it, is believed to become the new-age armour options. I think accolades and ovation is on their way for Ortiz and his colleagues. Did I see them stiffening their collars?! ;)
Via Times of India
