It seems like it's not only Marvel's Avengers that has pushed Spider-Man aside because, according to a study published on Jan. 18, a larger body surface must be covered in adhesive pads as the size of a creature increases, which means that it may not be possible for Spider-Man to scale walls with his hands and feet alone.
The study titled "Extreme positive allometry of animal adhesive pads and the size limits of adhesion-based climbing" was published in bioRxiv (pronounced as "bio-archive") by a team of researchers from the University of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin University in the United Kingdom (U.K.), University of Massachusetts Amherst in the United States (U.S.) and the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia.
In the study, the researchers tested 225 climbing species and compared their body's adhesive pad area to their weight and found that, as the creatures increased in size, so did the surface area of their body part that can stick to vertical surfaces. They also noted that there is a 200 percent increase of body surface appropriated for adhesive pads from mites to geckos.
What this means for Spider-Man to exist is that 40 percent of his total body surface must be covered in adhesive pads for it to be able to support his weight. That or Spider-Man must have size 114 adhesive feet to be able to walk up walls... or like the photo below, with his lower body sticking to the glass, except his torso should also be sticking to the glass to avoid falling to his death.
So is there really no way for Spider-Man to exist because this study said so? The short answer is that it is not necessarily the case. The researchers also found that tree frogs have more effective or "more sticky" adhesive pads in their feet as a way to make up for the lack of adhesive body surface area.
"[Some] taxa appear to have increased their pads' adhesive efficiency with size. The mechanisms underlying this increase in adhesive strength are still unclear, but may be of considerable interest for the development of large-scale bio-inspired adhesives," the study explains. The down side is that science is still unclear as to how the strength of the adhesive develops and only untested hypotheses are out there. Perhaps there is hope for Spidey, after all.
