How the crocodile got its skin

Animal appendages, such as feathers, hair, and scales, usually develop as genetically controlled units during embryo development. There are some exceptions to this rule, such as the head scales on crocodiles, which have been found to be produced by purely mechanical processes.
However, the precise mechanism driving the patterning of head scales has been hard to determine, in part owing to the technical difficulties of experimenting with crocodile embryos.

By combining experiments in Nile crocodile embryos and computer simulations, Michel Milinkovitch and colleagues found that the scales self-organize through simple mechanical processes, such as compressive folding originating from both the skin growing faster than the underlying bone and the contrasting stiffness of these different tissues.

This process produces irregular geometric patterns in the head scales as the crocodile grows in a distinctly different way to how the body scales develop as genetically controlled units. Read the full OA article published in Nature here: http://spklr.io/6051fd3S

Видео How the crocodile got its skin канала Springer Nature