In August of this year, Allison Noles rushed her bulldog Bella Mae to the vet. The dog’s face looked like a pincushion, with some 500 spines protruding from her face, paws and body. The internet is littered with such pictures, of Bella Mae and other unfortunate dogs. To find them, just search for “porcupine quills”.

But that’s not all the barbs do. Woo Kyung Cho from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology has found that the barbs also make it easier for the quills to impale flesh in the first place. “This is the only system with this dual functionality, where a single feature—the barbs—both reduces penetration force and increases pull-out force,” says Jeffrey Karp,