THE hygiene secrets of pilot whales might hold the key to environmentally
friendly paint for ships. It seems the whales have specially adapted skin that
repels would-be hangers-on.
Christoph Baum and a team from the Hanover School of Veterinary Medicine in
Germany have discovered that a pilot whale’s skin has a specialised
nano-structure that stops the build-up of microscopic organisms such as barnacle
larvae. They plan to mimic the idea in an anti-fouling paint.
The finding may also explain why cetaceans often leap acrobatically out of
the water. Because their skin is hydrophilic, larvae, bugs and other
contaminants prefer to…
