Have scientists really developed a super glue from mussels and geckoes?

[P-Kasso2]

Geckoes, I can understand because they have famously sticky feet. But mussels?  A friend (our local science buff and wannabe Albert Einstein) swears blind that he has read somewhere that scientists really have developed a new super glue by boiling down mussels and dead geckos.

Is it true? Have they? Are any details available?

[moonzero2]

While it may be a possibility, I would have thought they would have included limpets in any study.
cant, see where geckos would come into it.

[P-Kasso2]

While it may be a possibility, I would have thought they would have included limpets in any study.
Can't see where geckos would come into it.

Can't see where Geckos would come into it?  Really?  Have you never lived in the tropics Moonzero and watched in total fascination at the way Geckos run up your living room walls and zoom straight across your ceiling without once falling off or even stumbling?

It's incredible to watch.  Must be some kind of super superglue, right?

So maybe no wonder scientists and glue manufacturers are more than interested in Geckos sticky toes, eh?  Wrong!  The truth is that Geckos clinging to walls and ceilings has absolutely nothing to do with glue, super or otherwise.   

It's because Geckos have very hairy toes!  Microscopically hairy toes!

What's more, Geckos can even quickly turn the stickiness of their toes on and off, a new scientific study has found.

Gecko toes are well-studied by boffins, and their sticky toe properties have already  inspired some incredible new human technologies...such as stitch-free ways to seal wounds...and sticky handheld paddles that may help soldiers scale walls someday.  (Trust bliddy humans to exploit Geckos militarily!)

For the past decade, researchers have already been developing synthetic adhesives with nano-sized fibres designed to mimic Geckos' bristly little toes.

And new research on the subtleties of 'Gecko Adhesion' shows that nature is still outpacing scientists in the lab.  (For 7 more remarkable ways that studying Nature has already inspired important human inventions, just Google this following website...Biomimicry: 7 Technologies Inspired by Nature.)

If I haven't already bored you to death, and you are still reading this... As already mentioned, Geckos can stick to surfaces because their bulbous little toes are covered in hundreds of tiny microscopic hairs.  These are called setae. 

But there's more!  Each seta itself splits off into hundreds of even smaller bristles called spatulae.  Scientists already knew that the tufts of these tiny hairs get so close to the contours in walls and ceilings that the van der Waals force kicks in. 

Van de Who force?  The van der Waals force basically says that... This type of physical Gecko-toe bond happens when electrons from the Gecko's hairy toe molecules and electrons from the wall molecules interact with each other and create an electromagnetic attraction.

QED?

All this highly fascinating (?) stuff I gleaned from https://www.livescience.com/47307-how-geckos-stick-and-unstick-feet.html

But remember you heard it on AI first!

[moonzero2]

I knew that Geckos arboreal ability came from the hair on their feet but not the mechanics of the action.
the question suggested to me that a secretion was thought to be involved such as slug/snail slime.

Hence the statement, cheers for the heads up though; most informative.