The humble gecko is the real-world equivalent of Spider-Man, at least when it comes to the ability to walk up walls. But now scientists say that little lizard is the closest we'll ever see to real-life Spidey climbing powers, thanks to some pretty inflexible limitations imposed by biology, physics and Earth's gravity.Researchers at the University of Cambridge looked at 225 species of sticky-footed climbing creatures including spiders, tree frogs and geckos and found that the percentage of the animals' body surface covered in adhesive pads increases along with body size. This means that it quickly becomes impractical for anything much bigger than a gecko to ever evolve such a climbing ability -- because it would require comically large feet. "If a human, for example, wanted to walk up a wall the way a gecko does, we'd need impractically large sticky feet. Our shoes would need to be a European size 145 or a US size 114," says Walter Federle, senior author of a paper on the research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.I can attest that I'm already pretty clumsy and far from Spidey-like with my own oversized (US) size 15 feet, so making them any bigger would certainly seem to be quite a hindrance to any hypothetical building-climbing and simultaneous crime-fighting.
Part of the problem is that the bigger an animal is, the bulkier it tends to be. As Cambridge's Dr. David LaBonte explains, an ant has lots of surface area but very little volume, compared to the very voluminous blue whale, which has much less surface area for its size. "This poses a problem for larger climbing species because, when they are bigger and heavier, they need more sticking power to be able to adhere to vertical or inverted surfaces, but they have comparatively less body surface available to cover with sticky footpads. This implies that there is a size limit to sticky footpads as an evolutionary solution to climbing -- and that turns out to be about the size of a gecko."That's why bigger animals have developed other ways of climbing, such as claws and gripping toes or fingers. The researchers do also pose one other possible way larger animals could match the climbing skills of geckos or superheroes -- making those sticky footpads really, really sticky. "Within frogs, we found that they have switched to this second option of making pads stickier rather than bigger.
It's remarkable that we see two different evolutionary solutions to the problem of getting big and sticking to walls," says Christofer Clemente, a co-author from the University of the Sunshine Coast.Notably, though, the researchers did not look into whether or not the bite of an irradiated spider might cause such super stickiness to develop among spandex-wearing human crime-fighters. Clearly there's still more science to be done. Moto Z, this is your mission: Make Motorola relevant againNetflix Australia officially launches today, and the biggest question everyone is asking is this: just how much decent content does it actually have? When it comes to movies that are popular with Australians, the answer is: disappointingly few. Popcorn picture from Shutterstock Netflix doesn't release an exact number of titles it has available in any country. To get a sense of just how broad its coverage is down under, we decided to see how many of the movies that had reached #1 in Australian cinemas between 2010 and 2014 are available on the service.
While part of the appeal of any streaming service is the ability to discover hidden gems, it's also important to have popular content — and topping the box office charts is a clear indicator of popularity. We don't expect that Netflix (or anyone) would have full coverage — movie studios will typically partner with whoever offers the most money or other sweeteners, and rivals Presto, Stan and Quickflix have all signed up various big franchises. But even so, we were surprised by just how few of the biggest movies in Australia in recent years were actually available through Netflix. This chart sums up the situation: Of the 158 movies that topped Australian box office takings between 2010 and 2014, just 26 are available on Netflix Australia. While older flicks have a better chance of appearing, even in 2010 less than a third of the chart-topping movies have made their way to Netflix. That doesn't mean you won't have a lot to watch — but if you think of a popular movie, the chances are it isn't on Netflix right now.
Over at Gizmodo, Luke has done a similar comparison for geeky TV shows, with even more depressing results: 20 shows that were on Netflix US weren't on the local version. •How To Access Netflix US Using Your Netflix Australia Account Here are the full listings for each of those years: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug The Wolf of Wall Street 300: Rise of an Empire The Amazing Spider-Man 2 X-Men: Days of Future Past The Fault in Our Stars Transformers: Age of Extinction Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Guardians of the Galaxy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Available on Netflix AU The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters I Give It a Year Oz the Great and Powerful A Good Day to Die Hard Star Trek Into Darkness The Hangover Part III Fast & Furious 6 Now You See Me
Thor: The Dark World Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows Men in Black 3 Snow White and the Huntsman Ice Age 4: Continental Drift The Dark Knight Rises Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 Meet the Parents: Little Fockers I Am Number Four Just Go with It Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides The Hangover Part II Transformers: Dark of the Moon Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 Captain America: The First Avenger Rise of the Planet of the Apes The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol Clash of the Titans Hot Tub Time Machine Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Sex and the City 2 The Twilight Saga: Eclipse Tomorrow, When the War Began