After encountering a cholla cactus, Charlie had to have spines removed from his eyes, mouth, and paws by Arizona Humane Society veterinarians Kelli Bender is the Pets Editor at PEOPLE. She has been ...

The act of puncture – stabbing something with a sharp tool – is incredibly widespread in the natural world. Examples of ...

Study models how taper and cross-section shape affect the puncture efficiency and buckling resistance of diverse biological ...

The jumping cholla cactus’ innocuous, shrub-like appearance belies its prickly spines’ strength: As a new study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B reveals, a single cholla spine embedded ...

Did you know that there are over 1700 species of cacti—spiny plants that have evolved to survive some of the harshest environments on earth. Over the course of their evolutionary history, most species ...

Dear Doctors: I had a bad reaction to the barbs of a prickly pear cactus. Most of the itching stopped after I found and removed 20 tiny barbs, but now there's tingling and itching in my hands.

One benefit of working at a university with an agricultural school is the availability of meat. That’s especially useful if you need something to stab cactus spines into. The scientists weren’t as ...

A sweat-collecting patch has been developed using the principle based on how the cactus spines attract water. Sweat is an effective body fluid for analyzing bioanalytes in the body without collecting ...

Beware the jumping cholla, Cylindropuntia fulgida. This shrubby, branching cactus will—if provoked by touching—anchor its splayed spines in the flesh of the offender. The barbed spines grip so tightly ...

The spines of the jumping cholla cactus slide in with ease, but they’re grueling to extract. You can thank their barbs. ByKatherine J. Wu Tuesday, November 20, 2018 NOVA NextNOVA Next This unfortunate ...

The same traits that allow barbed cactus spines to readily penetrate animal flesh also make the spines more difficult to dislodge, a new study finds. The microscopic barbs on the spines are layered ...