How the ‘Diabolical’ Beetle Survives Being Run Over by a Car


The puny insect can withstand forces 39,000 times its body weight. Scientists just discovered its super-strength secret—which could inspire new materials.

The field of entomology is built on the humble pin: Biologists venture into grasslands and forests, scoop up insects, euthanize them, and pin them onto the trays that make up natural history collections in museums and universities, thus immortalizing the specimens for future scientists to examine. But the diabolical ironclad beetle—its actual name, though it’s more formally known as Phloeodes diabolicus—will suffer no such indignity. Native to the southwestern US, it’s known as a “pin-bender,” an insect so tough that when biologists try to drive a pin through its black, bumpy shell, the puny metal gives way. It’s so tough that entomologists have to drill a hole through it first, then drive the stake through. Which is an extra indignity, come to think of it.

The diabolical ironclad beetle is so tough, in fact, that if you run one over with a car, it just walks away. It can withstand forces 39,000 times its body weight. To actually crush this beetle requires 150 newtons of force, which, if you don’t speak fluent physics, is 7.5 times stronger than the force you can muster by squeezing something between your thumb and index finger.

For University of California Irvine materials scientist David Kisailus, the diabolical ironclad beetle isn’t just a curiosity—it’s an inspiration. Kisailus and his colleagues are today publishing a paper in the journal Nature decoding at least part of the mystery of how the beetle can manage such feats of strength. Natural selection has invented an ingenious structure that keeps the insect from flattening, a structure that Kisailus has begun to mine for ways of engineering new super-strong materials. “We're pretty stoked, because we think we can go to aircraft, automotive, sporting good industries with this kind of design,” says Kisailus.


Science_Beetle_246073.jpeg


https://www.wired.com/story/how-the-...=pocket-newtab