If you’ve ever bathed a dog, you know firsthand how quickly a drenched pup can shake water off. Now researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are studying the physics of the wet dog shake to possibly improve the efficiency of washing machines, dryers, painting devices, spin coaters, and other machines.

David Hu, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech, and mechanical engineering graduate student Andrew Dickerson, who led the project, recently captured 40 different animals—13 species total—using high-speed videography along with X-ray cinematography to see the details of how a mammal shakes itself dry.

The new research was presented at the 63rd annual meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics last month.

“We hope the findings from our research will contribute to technology that can harness these efficient and quick capabilities of drying seen in nature,” Dickerson says.

The Georgia Tech researchers found that animals oscillate at frequencies sufficient to lose water droplets, and that shaking frequency is a function of animal size.

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