Most people probably aren’t thinking about the complexity of nature when they get stung by a bee or prick their thumb on a rose. They are probably just thinking, “Ouch, that hurts!”Even at this level of interaction, however, it is obvious not all things in nature that poke you are created equal. The rose prickle may draw blood, while the bee sting can leave an itchy rash.The act of puncture – stabbing something with a sharp tool – is incredibly widespread in the natural world. Examples of puncture tools can be found everywhere: in mammals, snakes, birds, fish, insects, snails, jellyfish, plants, fungi, bacteria and even viruses. Their proliferation leads to a contradiction: If all of these puncture tools do essentially the same thing – stab – why do they look, and sometimes behave, so differently?AdvertisementAdvertisementIt is this contradiction that has captured my curiosity as a scientist who studies biomechanics, a field that uses physics to understand biological diversity. For the past 10 years, my lab members and I have examined the physics of puncture in an attempt to understand the wide diversity of puncture tools that appear in the natural world.In a recent paper, we examined 143 species and found a wonderfully complex relationship between the shape of a puncture tool and what it is being used for.The right tool for the jobPuncture tools are used for a variety of different jobs, and those jobs often dictate how the puncture tool evolves.For example, vipers use their fangs to inject venom into their target. This injection occurs during a strike, where the snake needs to puncture, inject and then remove their tooth and head afterward. Not surprisingly, the fangs evolved to be smooth, so they can be removed from …
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