Sharks’ tooth-like scales help to boost their acceleration rates

By Christa Lesté-Lasserre

Galipon

Tooth-like scales on shark skin reduce drag as they manoeuvre through the ocean, and they are at their most effective when the sharks accelerate.

Josephine Galipon at Keio University in Japan and her colleagues created synthetic shark skin from 3-D printed moulds based on scanning electron microscope images of skin samples skin from Pacific spiny dogfish (Squalus suckleyi). They then covered an aeroplane wing-shaped model with the skin and studied the fluid dynamics – specifically, the vortices, or water swirls, left in the model’s wake – as they moved it through water. …