ArticleNature communications2018
Locally-curved geometry generates bending cracks in the African elephant skin.
Article in Nature communications, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 46 citations in OpenAlex.
- Scalable Crackle-Lithography for Multifunctional Enclosed Plastic Nanofluidic Devices.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Elephant-Skin-Inspired Porous Cementitious Tiles with Programmable Crack Networks for Passive Cooling.Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) · 2026Article
- The Elephant Trunk Skin Inspires a Highly Sensitive and Deformable, Yet Robust, Armor Skin.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Functional anisotropy of the elephant trunk skin: A biological blueprint for grasping, protection, and tactile sensing.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Topological mechanical metamaterial for robust and ductile one-way fracturing.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Exacerbated sonic hedgehog signalling promotes a transition from chemical pre-patterning of chicken reticulate scales to mechanical skin folding.Open biology · 2025Article
- Second harmonic generation imaging reveals entanglement of collagen fibers in the elephant trunk skin dermis.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Elephants develop wrinkles through both form and function.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Programming crack patterns with light in colloidal plasmonic films.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Turtle Shell Kinesis Underscores Constraints and Opportunities in the Evolution of the Vertebrate Musculoskeletal System.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2023Review
- Skin wrinkles and folds enable asymmetric stretch in the elephant trunk.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Cracking the Skin Barrier: Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation Shines under the Skin.JID innovations : skin science from molecules to population health · 2021Review
- Textured Building Façades: Utilizing Morphological Adaptations Found in Nature for Evaporative Cooling.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
An intricate network of crevices adorns the skin surface of the African bush elephant, Loxodonta africana. These micrometre-wide channels enhance the effectiveness of thermal regulation (by water retention) as well as protection against parasites and intense solar radiation (by mud adherence). While the adaptive value of these structures is well established, their morphological characterisation and generative mechanism are unknown. Using microscopy, computed tomography and a custom physics-based lattice model, we show that African elephant skin channels are fractures of the animal brittle and desquamation-deficient skin outermost layer. We suggest that the progressive thickening of the hyperkeratinised stratum corneum causes its fracture due to local bending mechanical stress in the troughs of a lattice of skin millimetric elevations. The African elephant skin channels are therefore generated by thickening of a brittle material on a locally-curved substrate rather than by a canonical tensile cracking process caused by frustrated shrinkage.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.