Sticky bandages inspired by geckos' feet could soon be used to seal wounds and close surgeon's cuts. Since the bandages would dissolve harmlessly within the body, they could also replace stitches and sutures.

Geckos can walk on walls thanks to nanoscopic bristles, called setae, on the bottom of each foot. Setae produce an intermolecular attraction allowing the gecko's foot to stick to almost any surface.

So when Jeffrey Karp of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues set out to create a better medical tape for closing wounds and cuts, they decided to use structures similar to those on geckos' feet.

"A lot of people were working on gecko-inspired adhesives," Karp says, but their materials tend to lose stickiness when wet and do not biodegrade, making them unsuitable. Neither have these adhesives been tested on animals' tissues, Karp adds.