These are gecko toes.

But geckos do it better.

They're climbing up a wall, or a tree.

Robert Full Learning from the gecko's tail

And it works just like it does in the animal.

the gecko, and the monitor lizard, the wall lizard, the skink, and the chameleon.

the gecko, and the monitor lizard, the wall lizard, the skink, and the chameleon.

And the ferret, and the chameleon, and the lizard, and the snail, and the mole.

And the ferret, and the chameleon, and the lizard, and the snail, and the mole.

Excellent, i' faith, of the chameleon's dish.

Look at the end to see the animal.

So we then went back and looked at the animal.

Like the, what do you call those toes of the gecko?

And if you look, you can see that it uses the toe peeling, just like the gecko does.

Almost stepped on a gecko while going to the metro.

And here's the peeling action of the Mecho Gecko.

And the individual has 2 billion of these nano size split ends.

Man So you're the first human being to officially emulate a gecko.

We wondered, Do they actually glide in nature?

Now, of course, we were normally frightened because the animal has no gliding adaptations, so we thought, Oh that's okay. We'll put it in a vertical wind tunnel.

So we did. And here is what it does.

The gecko has a billion of these 200 nanometer sized split ends.

Here are the robots that they inspire, the Mecho Geckos from iRobot.

So there it comes down. There is a gecko at the end of that trajectory line.

The gecko's a really great example of nanotechnology in nature.

So then we wondered, Can they actually maneuver with this?

If you make it slip a huge amount, this is what we discovered.

You see something on it. It's not just to look like a gecko.

And you can try this in the lobby, and look at the gecko inspired material.

Let's see some of the geckos move with some video, and then I'll show you a little bit of a clip of the robots.

And we wondered how they use these bizarre toes to climb up a wall so quickly.

So now we were really confused, because there are no reports of it gliding.

You know, the toes of the gecko, curling and uncurling like the fingers of Michael Moschen.

This is the gecko's solution. They actually peel their toes away from the surface, at high rates, as they run up the wall.

Biologist Robert Full studies the amazing gecko, with its supersticky feet and tenacious climbing skill. But high speed footage reveals that the gecko's tail harbors perhaps the most surprising talents of all.

It's basically a measure of how many tigers, toads, ticks or whatever on average of biomass of various species are around.

We took some hairs from a molting gecko put three rolls of them on here, and then made this Band Aid.

Ah, soso.

Not bad.

Just about.

They can run up a wall at a meter a second, 15 steps per second, and they look like they're running on the level. How do they do this?

14 hours of prosthetic make up to get into a creature that had articulated paws, claws and a tail that whipped around, like a gecko.

I get by with them

Well I'm really excited today to show you the newest version of a robot, Stickybot, using a new hierarchical dry adhesive.

Does Aron get by with them?