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Hydrodynamic role of longitudinal dorsal ridges in a leatherback turtle swimming

Leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) are known to have a superior diving ability and be highly adapted to pelagic swimming. They have five longitudinal ridges on their carapace. Although it was conjectured that these ridges might be an adaptation for flow control, no rigorous study has bee...

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Autores principales: Bang, Kyeongtae, Kim, Jooha, Lee, Sang-Im, Choi, Haecheon
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5046118/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27694826
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep34283
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author Bang, Kyeongtae
Kim, Jooha
Lee, Sang-Im
Choi, Haecheon
author_facet Bang, Kyeongtae
Kim, Jooha
Lee, Sang-Im
Choi, Haecheon
author_sort Bang, Kyeongtae
collection PubMed
description Leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) are known to have a superior diving ability and be highly adapted to pelagic swimming. They have five longitudinal ridges on their carapace. Although it was conjectured that these ridges might be an adaptation for flow control, no rigorous study has been performed to understand their hydrodynamic roles. Here we show that these ridges are slightly misaligned to the streamlines around the body to generate streamwise vortices, and suppress or delay flow separation on the carapace, resulting in enhanced hydrodynamic performances during different modes of swimming. Our results suggest that shapes of some morphological features of living creatures, like the longitudinal ridges of the leatherback turtles, need not be streamlined for excellent hydro- or aerodynamic performances, contrary to our common physical intuition.
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spelling pubmed-50461182016-10-11 Hydrodynamic role of longitudinal dorsal ridges in a leatherback turtle swimming Bang, Kyeongtae Kim, Jooha Lee, Sang-Im Choi, Haecheon Sci Rep Article Leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) are known to have a superior diving ability and be highly adapted to pelagic swimming. They have five longitudinal ridges on their carapace. Although it was conjectured that these ridges might be an adaptation for flow control, no rigorous study has been performed to understand their hydrodynamic roles. Here we show that these ridges are slightly misaligned to the streamlines around the body to generate streamwise vortices, and suppress or delay flow separation on the carapace, resulting in enhanced hydrodynamic performances during different modes of swimming. Our results suggest that shapes of some morphological features of living creatures, like the longitudinal ridges of the leatherback turtles, need not be streamlined for excellent hydro- or aerodynamic performances, contrary to our common physical intuition. Nature Publishing Group 2016-10-03 /pmc/articles/PMC5046118/ /pubmed/27694826 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep34283 Text en Copyright © 2016, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
spellingShingle Article
Bang, Kyeongtae
Kim, Jooha
Lee, Sang-Im
Choi, Haecheon
Hydrodynamic role of longitudinal dorsal ridges in a leatherback turtle swimming
title Hydrodynamic role of longitudinal dorsal ridges in a leatherback turtle swimming
title_full Hydrodynamic role of longitudinal dorsal ridges in a leatherback turtle swimming
title_fullStr Hydrodynamic role of longitudinal dorsal ridges in a leatherback turtle swimming
title_full_unstemmed Hydrodynamic role of longitudinal dorsal ridges in a leatherback turtle swimming
title_short Hydrodynamic role of longitudinal dorsal ridges in a leatherback turtle swimming
title_sort hydrodynamic role of longitudinal dorsal ridges in a leatherback turtle swimming
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5046118/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27694826
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep34283
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