University of Akron research foundation

Among the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent to try to solve the crisis of concussions in football, one effort is inspired by a hand-sized ball of quills — the hedgehog. The hedgehog falls on purpose a lot and rarely gets hurt. That’s because it escapes predators by curling into a tight ball and bouncing to the ground, protected by a pelt with about 7,000 flexible spines, or quills, arranged by nature to distribute the blows.