The Wet-Dog Shake: How wet mammals dry themselves

The drying of wet fur is a critical to mammalian heat regulation. This fluid dynamics video demonstrates how hirsute animals rapidly oscillate their bodies to shed water droplets, nature's analogy to the spin cycle of a washing machine.

High-speed videography and fur-particle tracking is employed to determine the angular position of the animal's shoulder skin as a function of time. X-ray cinematography is used to track the motion of the skeleton. Particular attention is paid to rationalizing the relationship between animal size and oscillation frequency required to self-dry.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.3279, ArXiv, 15 Oct 2010