Tweezers based on the shape of a crow鈥檚 beak can work better at picking up objects than the types people have used for thousands of years.
Archaeologists have found tweezers dating back to 2450 BC, and similar tools are are still used daily in homes, beauty salons and even operating theatres. But nature has been perfecting similar designs so birds can pick things up with their beaks for millions of years.
Advertisement
To investigate whether we can take advantage of this evolutionary know-how,聽 at the University of Tsukuba, Japan, and his colleagues modelled a pair of tweezers that mimicked the shape of the beak of the New Caledonian crow (Corvus moneduloides) 鈥� an intelligent species of bird known to use simple tools. The crow鈥檚 beak is 4.3 centimetres in size, on average.
鈥淣o one knew if traditional tweezers were really the best design for picking up objects, so that was our motivation,鈥� says Murakami. 鈥淪o we looked for a better design and we came up with the crow鈥檚 beak, because a crow is very good at using tools and very dexterous. It picks up bugs from inside holes.鈥�
The design was 3D-printed, with a flexible part connecting the two halves, and named Kuchibashi.
To assess how easy the tweezers were to use, the team recruited human participants to transfer glass beads with diameters of 3, 5, 8 and 14 millimetres from one dish to another in various tests, with their fingers, traditional tweezers and the Kuchibashi tweezers. The participants were timed to see how long the task took and then asked how easy each task was.
It took a similar time to complete tasks involving 3 and 5-millimetre beads with the crow-inspired tweezers and standard tweezers, but the crow-beak tweezers were faster to use with larger 8 and 14-millimetre beads. Most users also reported that the bird-inspired tweezers were easy to use.
鈥淲hen you use tweezers and you pick something up, it sometimes slips away and goes somewhere, but with the crow-beak tweezers it has a hollow space to hold them,鈥� says Murakami. 鈥淚t鈥檚 very comfortable, because it鈥檚 stable. It鈥檚 easy to grab objects.鈥�
at the University of Exeter, UK, says the research is a great example of nature inspiring engineers. 鈥淚t comes as no surprise to me that millions of years of evolution have designed beautifully adapted systems that can be adopted by engineers, but it鈥檚 always fabulous to see tangible examples. The feats that birds can achieve with their beaks, from the intricately woven nests of weaver birds to the finely crafted tools of New Caledonian crows, are phenomenal.鈥�
Reference:
