To latch onto a deer, ticks must first pierce a thick, furry hide. Leaf-cutter ants easily gnaw through tough tropical leaves. And scorpions use their tails to inject venom into prey several times larger than themselves.

Such marvels have long intrigued University of Oregon physicist Robert Schofield. How do these tiny creatures deliver such an outsized punch?

The answer, according to his new paper published in Scientific Reports, lies in the very atomic structure of their tools.

Scientists already knew that the mandibles, fangs, and stingers of several invertebrate species contain large amounts of heavy metals, such as zinc, copper, and manganese—up to 20 percent by weight in some species. But they didn’t know how the