"Of course, that mountain lion's days of porcupine feasting may end forever if the quills keep it from eating or end up in the cat's vulnerable internal organs.Still, a quill passing through the body is far from painless — it's excruciating — as Roze knows from personal experience. "Surgical staples are faster to insert than sutures, which require a needle and thread, he explains. "They feel like they're not in danger, and they're sweet. "But he estimates that, if the right technologies become available, human testing of porcupine quill-inspired tools could begin in two to five years. Only when threatened will the porcupine erect them. "We've been using sutures and staples for decades, and they've been incredibly useful," says Jeff Karp, a bioengineer at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He and his team ran experiments comparing a barbed quill to a barbless quill, measuring the forces required to insert and remove barbed spears.In contrast to a barbless quill or a surgical staple — which tear the tissue and create gaps that are susceptible to infection — the barbed quill's design means it does minimal damage on the way in, the researchers found.A new type of medical staple that had two barbed tips would require much less effort to place, Karp figures, and the gripping power of the barbs would hold it in position without needing to bend the staple.Karp says he anticipates making the new staples out of biodegradable material so they will fully dissolve over time without having to be removed.The challenge now is to recreate the full barb's shape. Right: In a live porcupine, the partially-hidden quills usually lay flat along the herbivore's body, amidst other hairs, until and unless called into action. Because of their barbs, porcupine quills can get stuck in a dog's soft tissue can move deeper into the body if they're not removed right away. The barbed quills also slide in with less force than a hypodermic needle of the same width, or than the quill of an African porcupine, which doesn’t have any barbs (see end of post). Quills Can Cause Internal Damage. Often, these displays are shown when a porcupine becomes agitated or annoyed. Porcupines are distributed into two evolutionarily independent groups within the suborder This article is about the mammal.
Porcupines can be found on rocky areas up to 3,700 m (12,100 ft) high. Broken quills can become embedded and migrate within … Bioengineers think the same sort of barbs could help keep dissolvable medical staples in place until a wound heals.Left: A microscopic image compares the size of a North American porcupine's quill tip with the tip of a narrow, 18-gauge needle. He kept the quill as a souvenir.The quill's barbs eased its penetration into his flesh. When scientists examine the skulls of deceased mountain lions, Roze says, they often find the tips of porcupine quills embedded in the lions' jaw bones"The mountain lion just accepts it," said Roze. For other uses, see Parker, SB (1990) Grzimek's Encyclopedia of Mammals, vol. The North American Porcupine has about 30,000 quills. "Nature has designs that humans can't achieve yet, at least at large scale," Karp says.
4, McGraw-Hill, New York. The slow-moving herbivore only uses the quills as a last-resort defense against predators.The quills are actually specialized hairs, and mostly lie flat against the animal's body.
"This could be an enabler for smaller incisions to be made in a large number of surgeries," Karp says. While porcupine quills are not poisonous, only a doctor or veterinarian should attempt to remove them. For example, their guardhairs are used in the creation of the The presence of barbs, acting like anchors, makes it more painful to remove a quill that has pierced the skin.Porcupines occupy a small range of habitats in tropical and temperate parts of Asia, Southern Europe, Africa, and North and South America.
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