WASHINGTON: According to a study conducted by University of Cambridge researchers, cockroaches make use of fast and slow twitch muscle fibers as well as add a ‘force boost’ to their mandibles to chew on tough materials. They can bite with a force 50 times stronger than their own body weight, and with five times more force than a human being, reported TechTimes.
Cockroaches have a pair of strong, horizontally aligned sharp jaws, or mandibles, which they use for eating, digging, transporting, defense and feeding offspring.
“As insects play a dominant role in many ecosystems, understanding the amount of force that these insects can exert through their mandibles is a pivotal step in better understanding behavioral and ecological processes and enabling bio-inspired engineering,” said lead researcher Dr Tom Weihmann, from Cambridge University’s Department of Zoology.
