Fish scales may point to armour of the future

Scales that protect a quarrelsome fish from the bites of its own fellows as well as from predators may hold the key to the armour of the future, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday.

Writing in the journal Nature Materials, the MIT team said they had figured out how it works. Each scale is layered so it deflects the pressure of a crunching bite, they said.

Cracks do not travel far — the design forces cracks to run in a circle around the penetration site, rather than spreading through the entire scale and leading to catastrophic failure, they said.

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Tagged as: Armor, Fish, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nature Materials, Polypterus senegalus, Predators, Scales

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