Apparently, geckos aren’t just for selling car insurance anymore. They also boogie down for Life Water—to Michael Jackson’s "Thriller." The music is so ‘80s, but the reptile is HOT HOT HOT these days. I suppose some ad execs did focus groups to determine which creatures, when made to talk or dance and wear gangsta grills on their teeth, can sell stuff. Geckos, apparently, scored high.

Actually, I get it. I’m a huge fan of geckos. I keep them as pets and breed them. And I have to say, they’re doing much bigger and better things out in the world than pushing products or entertaining the likes of me. They are inspiring new technologies that actually help people.

It’s all about the feet. Gecko toes are covered with millions of microscopic spatula-tipped hairs that adhere to surfaces at the molecular level. It’s what allows them to walk on walls and hang upside down. Scientists have realized how amazing the hairs are and are applying the hair principle to getting other stuff to stick. Most recently, MIT researchers been working on a glue-coated polymer that may be used on human skin and organs like a Band-Aid, holding things together that otherwise might leak or split, even inside the body. The technology could possibly replace surgical sutures someday.

Meanwhile, other scientists, at Stanford, have applied the gecko-foot model to a robot they hope can be used in search-and-rescue operations. Its feet are lined with a synthetic version of the gecko hairs, and it can creep up and down walls like the real thing (though not quite as nimbly…yet). The robots limbs even mimic the gecko's anatomy.

Now isn't that more impressive than reptilian hip-hop?

-Jennifer S. Holland

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