Meeting Abstract
Everything on earth is subject to physical laws, thus they influence all facets of living creatures. Though these laws restrain animals in many ways, some animals have developed a way to use physical phenomena in their favor to conserve energy. Many animals which have to handle fluids, for example, have evolved passive mechanisms by adapting their wettability or using capillary forces for rapid fluid spreading. In distinct animals a similar selection pressure always favors a convergent development. But when assessing the biological tasks of passive fluid handling mechanisms, their diversity is rather surprising. Besides the well described handling water to facilitate drinking in arid regions, observed in e.g. several lizards, other animals like a special flat bug have developed a similar mechanism for a completely different task and fluid: Instead of water, these bugs passively transport an oily defense secretion to a region close to their head where it finally evaporates. And again some spiders use capillary forces to capture prey, by sucking in the viscous waxy cuticle of their prey with their nanofibrous threads. We want to describe the similarities and differences in the deployed mechanisms across the animal kingdom. Though focusing on fluid handling of well-studied reptiles, we aim to stretch over to other not as extensively studied species for which similar mechanisms for a different task are described.
