Some nerve! Stretch our nerves just a few millimetres and we recoil in pain - which makes a fin whale's bungee-rope-like nerves even more impressive. They can stretch to more than twice their normal length. Robert Shadwick of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and his team stumbled upon a long, white cord, which looked like a blood vessel, while analysing whale tissue. Once they realised it was a nerve they were amazed at how far they could stretch it - something unheard of in vertebrates. The stretchiness comes from a unique micro-coiling of the biological materials that make up the sheath of the nerve, especially collagen and elastin. The tiny coils unravel to allow the sheath to stretch, then return to their coiled state when the nerve contracts (Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.03.007).
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