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Do not be angry the next time a wasp stings your arm during a picnic. Distract yourself by contemplating how the wasp sting is designed to inflict as much damage as possible, scientists at Ohio State University said.
"When you really study these needles, you see how elegant and mechanically durable they are," said mechanical engineering professor Bharat Bhushan in a press release. "Other words might come to mind first. But when you look at things from an engineer's point of view, they are elegantly designed. "
In a study published Oct. 8 in the journal Scientific Reports and published Monday in the journal Scientific Reports, Bhusan and other researchers used computer imaging to study what happens when a bee or a wasp plunges its sting into a helpless victim.
It's not just a morbid curiosity. The scientists said in the study that the research could be helpful to researchers who develop special microneedles for medicine.
The scientists examined the insects of two insects: the common wasp and the honeybee. According to this study, the insects were collected in India, frozen and removed.
Scientists then created a computer model of stingers to examine their structures in great detail.
In particular, the researchers noticed that the darts were much softer at the top than at the base. This sneaky design could be to deceive the victim so that she does not notice the sting until it is too late, writes Bhusan.
"Wasps and bees do not want to create too much pain at first, and we think the softer tip makes it less likely that you notice the initial insertion," he said. "If you feel the pain immediately, you react and eliminate the insect before it has finished injecting its venom. "
They found that the average stinger wasps measured about 2.5 millimeters long (or about twice the width of a grain of sand), about 1.5 millimeter of which perforated the skin. The stinger of the bee was shorter, about 1.6 millimeters long. The stinger wasp was also curved, while the stinger bee was not.
The stingers consist of two smaller needles that penetrate the skin and a hollow canal that injects venom into the blood, the scientists said.
"It's a smart design to optimize the mechanical properties of needles without being too heavy," Bhushan said in a press release. "The differences in hardness and stiffness along the length of the stinger help it to penetrate as deeply as possible while maintaining its structure."
So, how can these painful appendages help humans?
"We are trying to productively use what we have learned about stinger insects by imagining the design of a better microneedle," wrote Bhushan.
This would involve making a needle finer at the tip, which would require less force to penetrate the skin, which would reduce the pain, say the scientists. Studying the angle at which bees choose to dive their goads could also help health professionals find a better way to proceed with the injection, the scientists said.
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