Cockroaches are the ultimate survivors. Famous for their hardiness, they have wandered the Earth in
Cockroaches are the ultimate survivors. Famous for their hardiness, they have wandered the Earth in their modern form since the age of the dinosaurs approximately 200 million years ago. Although they can go for long periods of time without food or water, they have a remarkable ability to eat just about anything - including hair, wallpaper paste and leather book-bindings. A new study reveals that their flexible diet is supported by jaws that use a combination of ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ muscle fibres to cope with a wide range of materials. Cockroaches have mouthparts known as mandibles, which consist of horizontally-aligned blades a bit like scissors. When the mandibles are activated by fast muscle fibres, energy is released rapidly to allow quick but comparatively weak bites. In contrast, slow muscle fibres gradually build up to maximum strength, and the use of these can enable a cockroach’s bite force to reach up to 50 times stronger than its own bodyweight. In relative terms, this is 5 times more powerful than the force we can generate with our own jaws.Ref: Weihmann T. et al., 2015. Fast and powerful: biomechanics and bite forces of the mandibles in the American cockroach Periplaneta Americana. PLoS ONE 10: e0141226 [link] -- source link
#science#zoology#biology#animals#invertebrate#cockroach#american cockroach#insect#mandible#bite force