Scientists have made the first ever realistic simulated shark skin that they believe will boost swimming.
Scientists from Harvard University also measured that the fish's sharp scales boost swimming by up to 6.6 percent while reducing the energy cost.
George Lauder and his colleagues Li Wen and James Weaver took a small sample of the fish's skin for scanning to get a high-resolution view of the surface and then built a detailed model of the structure before reproducing it thousands of times in a computer model of the skin.
Lauder said that artificial shark skin needs to have rigid denticles/scales on a flexible substrate so that the biomimetic skin can flex and bend like real shark skin and he is now keen to test how altering the arrangement of the denticles will affect performance.
The study has been published in The Journal of Experimental Biology.
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