Balancing forces and branches

1995/06/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Biologia

Many animals use branches and skulls to attack in mental combats. A team of biologists from the University of Chicago has shown that goat animals are fighting a force that would easily divide the human skull. According to biologists, the animals that use the branches as weapons have in the skull a special system of shock absorbers that allows them to withstand the aforementioned blow forces. The confirmation of this hypothesis has been the role of the group's biologists in recent months.

Biologists used the skulls of dead goats to investigate. To measure the strength that the bone plates that form the skull can withstand, tensiomentres were placed and simulated the blows that occur in the fights of the animals by means of lead weights. Biologists have stated that the blow generates an expansive force in the front of the branches and compresses the back of the skull. Thanks to this mechanism of shock absorbers, these animals achieve that the strength that supports in the fight does not separate from their place. Despite the interim results of the research, biologists are studying. And it is not very clear what moves bone plaque. According to biologists, the fact that the branches of goat animals are zig-zag shaped could be related.