Article: Cuticle strength and the size-dependence of safety factors in Cancer crab claws.

Introduction

Rather unexpectedly, structures as diverse as mollusc shells (Vermeij, 1982; Brandwood, 1985), crab claws (Juanes and Hartwick, 1990; Taylor et al., in press), the teeth of living and extinct carnivorous mammals (Van Valkenburgh, 1988; Van Valkenburgh and Hertel, 1993), the antlers of ungulates (Kitchener, 1991), and the limbs of birds and mammals (Buikstra, 1975; Currey, 1984; Brandwood et al., 1986) exhibit high rates of nonlethal failure in natural populations. The skeletons of many organisms therefore appear to operate near their upper performance limits under normal living conditions, and safety factors (e.g., the ratio of breaking strength to ...

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