Cockroaches are special specie pre-dating dinosaurs and have unique characteristics than can make them live up to two weeks after being decapitated. If this is not scary enough, the result of the new study will make you shudder even more every time you spy a cockroach nearby.
As reported by Times Live, the cockroaches are able to turbo-charge their jaws so they can bite 50 times more force than their own body weight and with five times the relative force of a human being according to a new study published in the journal Public Library of Science ONE. That's one impressive bite.
Independent UK further reports that the insects have a special set of "slow twitch" muscles that build up the strength. In turn, this gives the insects a huge boost to their bites.
Dr. Tom Weihmann, lead researcher from Cambridge University's Department of Zoology hopes that this discovery may be used by engineers to build powerful machines and create a similar design of their own.
"As insects play a dominant role in many ecosystems, understanding the amount of force that these insects can exert through their mandibles is a pivotal step in better understanding behavioural and ecological processes and enabling bio-inspired engineering".
"Ours is the first study to measure the bite forces of ordinary insects, and we found that the American cockroach, Periplaneta americana, can generate a bite force around 50 times stronger than their own body weight. In relative terms that's about five times stronger than the force a human can generate with their jaws", he added.
Previous studies mainly focused on larger animals with teeth however the new study looks at cockroaches' unusual biting approach. The insect actually uses horizontally-aligned blade-like mandibles. The insects have a unique biting system for shredding food, digging, transport, defence and feeding offspring. Given the size of their heads, the power must be packed into a tiny space.
This technique may be applied in designing machines that are small but has tremendous power. Small machines with such power may be used as surgical equipments. Do you find this information helpful? Do you like this article? Don't forget to share the information on Facebook!