Gecko’s Feet
“…and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery…” [Ephesians 5:31,32]
Geckos are small, insect-eating lizards that have an almost miraculous ability to scurry up walls and stick to ceilings. Aristotle noted the amazing climbing abilities of geckos in the fourth century B.C. and scientists have wondering ever since how the noisy little creatures could walk up smooth surfaces or even upside down on a polished glass ceiling. They knew it was not suction and they also realized, without any glands on their feet, that geckos cannot produce their own sticky glue.
A team of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, now think they have solved the riddle. It appears to come from a weak magnetic attraction that molecules have for one another when they are brought very, very close together. Scientists looked at the feet of a gecko through a microscope, which revealed about two million densely packed, fine hairs, or “setae,” on each toe. The end of each seta is further subdivided into hundreds to thousands of structures called spatulae. These billion spatulae, which look like broccoli on the tips of the hairs, produce electrical attractions that are pressed so close to a surface they electrically glue the animals down.
The team of biologists and engineers calculated that the combined powerful adhesive force of all the tiny hairs lining the gecko’s toes is 10 times greater than the maximum force needed to pull a gecko off the wall. The gecko hairs have also been shown to be self-cleaning, unlike any other known adhesive. The geckos have developed an amazing way of walking with these six million dry adhesive foot-hairs on each foot. They scamper up walls and across ceilings, roll these hairs onto the surface and then peel them off again just like tape, all within a fraction of a second. The attraction of the weak electrical forces allows the gecko to stick to virtually any surface – even polished glass. It has been estimated that if our feet had the same “sticking power” of a gecko foot, each foot could hold about 90 pounds to a glass ceiling.
Man continues to search for better glues, but the Bible speaks of glue that will hold a man and woman together for life. Regarding entering into the sacred marriage covenant, God says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined (cleave) to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). With so many marriages falling apart these days, we need to put God back into our relationships to provide the sticking power to stay together.
