Scientists reveal how diabolical ironclad beetle can survive being run over by car

Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Get our free Health Check email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. After we ran it over with a car, we did proper mechanical testing and crushed it in one of our dynamic mechanical testing devices.” “This beetle which is adapted to living on land, and has these two halves of its flying structures now permanently stitched together by a jigsaw puzzle-like architecture which we call the medial suture.” Asked how this arrangement could be used to adapt human technology, Professor Kisailus gave the example of the joins between components inside an aircraft, which need to be bonded together strongly, but are also resilient enough to withstand various forces. He said: “We thought, ‘Oh, let’s make a mimic of the beetle’s jigsaw-puzzle-like structure and join a metal - a piece of aluminium - with a composite, and let’s pull on it and compare the strength and toughness to that which you would see on an aircraft, and what we found was, the strength of the beetle’s suture - the mimic that we made - was roughly the same strength as the aircraft fastener, but 100 per cent more tough.” David Restrepo, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio who worked on this project as a postdoctoral researcher, explained the concept. But the interfacial sutures of the diabolical ironclad beetle provide a robust and more predictable failure that could help solve these problems,” said Maryam Hosseini, who worked on this project as a PhD student. That's what nature has enabled the diabolical ironclad beetle to do," said professor Pablo Zavattieri of Purdue University.