Yet another case of adopting from Mother nature.

Love these guys. They are on the right track when they are looking for anti-adhesive properties in plants as well. I hope some large company doesn\'t acquire their ideas and suppress them in order to keep selling one-use disposable adhesives.

Of course, if the reusable tape is ever applied to a dirty, dusty, or greasy surface, it\'s rendered useless; and, of course, the effect would be cumulative, losing a bit of adhesion each time it\'s used, due to dust in the air settling onto most surfaces.

Very cool!

\"Providing an illustration of the adhesive properties of the new tape, a 20 x 20 cm (7.87 in) square piece was able to support the weight of one team member dangling from the ceiling.\"
That\'s great, but that\'s a useless number for comparison.
I note that every explanation of this tape\'s strength is compared to itself or nothing at all. That makes me suspect this isn\'t very strong tape.
So how much duct tape do you need, or double sided carpet tape, to lift the same person?

re; Maury Markowitz
Several square yards.

Get this into mass production and smart criminals will love it. They\'ll be able to tape things up without leaving fingerprints in the adhesive. That\'s caught many criminals who thought they\'d cleaned up everything.

@Slowburn, how do you figure that? It looks from the picture as though the guy is holding onto a suction pad for handling glass, which is presumably holding onto the tape, in turn taped to the glass. Assuming a good seal to the pad, a 20x20 square of duct tape would seem very trustworthy to me, as pulling it straight off the glass requires a huge amount of force. I wouldn\'t be surprised if 20x20 of cello tape could hold a person under the same conditions.

How will they keep the tape from sticking to itself?

re; Marcus Carr
I have worked with the stuff, and watched Mythbusters.