Airplanes With Sharks' Skin? It May Cut Fuel Burn

Aside from connoisseurs of high-end cowboy boots, most people don’t have much skin from sharks in their lives (as opposed to that well-known worsted fabric called sharkskin). In a few years that may change. Airbus and the German airline Lufthansa, working together, are testing a shark-skin coating for their airplanes. It’s not actual shark skin, but a synthetic replica, and it’s part of the continual effort to reduce airlines’ mammoth fuel bills.

We’re used to thinking of aerodynamics as a matter of sleekness, but a shark’s skin suggests that the right kind of roughness is actually better. Sharks may be all clean lines and curves from afar, but their skin is composed of jagged scales covered with longitudinal ridges. Those tiny ridges are a big part of why sharks can so easily slice through the water.