how many millimetre can sea sponges moves

She and her colleagues wondered, “Why this particular architecture?” “It’s this periodic architecture, but it’s not a simple one,” Bertoldi said.

Katia Bertoldi, one of Aizenberg’s co-authors on the recent studies, was also captivated by the lattice pattern as soon as she saw it.

The skeleton’s strength derives from its peculiar lattice pattern, which first intrigued the Harvard materials scientist and chemist Joanna Aizenberg about 20 years ago. “It’s sort of the holy grail of engineering design,” said Dhruv Bhate, an associate professor of engineering at Arizona State University who studies the Venus’ flower basket but is not involved in the work of the Harvard team. Their recent work reveals that the skeleton is, for unknown reasons, exceptionally strong - nearly as uncrushable as possible for this kind of structure. For the last two decades, a group of biologists, materials scientists and engineers at Harvard University has focused on the feature of Venus’ flower basket that attracted Owen: the intricate design of its glass skeleton. Its notable properties include stunning longevity - some glass sponges are thought to live many thousands of years, placing them among the longest-lived animals - and the ability to channel light through its silica strands in the manner of fiber optics. Scientists still marvel at this sponge 180 years later.

It resembled “a delicate cornucopia,” he wrote, one woven from “stiff, glistening, elastic threads, resembling the finest hairs of spun glass.” The skeleton is indeed made of glass, which the animal, Euplectella aspergillum - nicknamed “Venus’ flower basket,” - creates using acid extracted from seawater. In 1841, the English biologist Richard Owen marveled at the intricate skeleton of a new sea sponge species found near the Philippines.

How many millimetre can sea sponges moves