Fig. 4.

Bending stiffness at all life stages of C. elegans as a function of worm diameter. The power-law fit shows a D⁴ dependence, consistent with modeling the stiffness of the worm as a self-similar cylinder. Images on the top show snapshots from the experiments, with an L1, L2, L3, and L4 worm from left to right. Images of experiments done on a young adult and adult worm can be found in Figs. 5A and 1B, respectively. Colors and markers correspond to the respective data sets. Scale bar, 100 μm.