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 nearly dirtfree without grooming or washing.
TOE PRINT. When the underside of a gecko toe (left) was dusted with microspheres and pressed onto glass, millions of sticky fibers in the thin, platelike structures shed microspheres onto the glass, leaving a print visible under laser light (right).
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