The scientific marvel which is the gecko toe should start a new kind of foot fetish. Each gecko footpad has five toes, all of which are covered with thousands of inconceivably tiny hair-like structures called setae. Each setae has the diameter of about 5 micrometers. To put this into perspective, the diameter of human hair can be anywhere from 17 to 181 micrometers. The fineness of the seta is nothing, however. On the tip of each seta are anywhere from 100 to 1,000 spatulae, which jut out at an angle. These spatulae are smaller than a wavelength of visible light. Because of these microhairs, each footpad of the gecko bonds to surfaces at a molecular level. The effect is one of the most whimsical nature has to offer; a mature gecko could, utilizing every setae in its possessions, hold aloft a weight of almost 300 pounds.
This disproportional strength could make any weightlifting champion weep. It would seem that breaking a bond of this level would be a Herculean feat, an evolutionary oddity that would actually be the undoing of the gecko in the face of a wily predator. No- the detachment is pure in its simplicity. An anticlimax of the gods, really. The gecko can be freed from his molecular bond by moving his microhairs in the opposite direction.
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