Enhanced Flexibility of the Segmented Honey Bee Tongue with Hydrophobic Tongue Hairs

Fibrous surfaces in nature have already exhibited excellent functions that are normally ascribed to the synergistic effects of special structures and material properties. The honey bee tongue, foraging liquid food in nature, has a unique segmented surface covered with dense hairs. Since honey bees are capable of using their tongue to adapt to possibly the broadest range of feeding environments to exploit every possible source of liquids, the surface properties of the tongue, especially the covering hairs, would likely represent an evolutionary optimization. In this paper, we show that their tongue hairs are stiff and hydrophobic, the latter of which is highly unexpected as the structure is designed for liquid capturing. We found that such hydrophobicity can prevent those stiff hairs from being adhered to the soft tongue surface, which could significantly enhance the deformability of the tongue when honey bees feed at various surfaces and promote their adaptability to different environments. These findings bridge the relationship between surface wettability and structural characteristics, which may shed new light on designing flexible microstructured fiber systems to transport viscous liquids.