Despite not having brains, fruits aren’t stupid – they know things want to get at their insides, so they’ve developed thick skins to prevent them. For the parasitic fig wasp, this presents a problem: Fig insides are crucial to their very existence, because it’s where they lay their eggs. Their solution? According to a study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Science, it’s a flexible appendage thinner than a human hair that’s tipped with zinc and works a lot like a drill bit.

Boring mechanisms in insects are not news – you can thank them any time you get an itchy mosquito bite, after all. What makes the fig wasp interesting is how efficiently it pierces the fig skins, and the study findings demonstrate that the zinc tipping is the reason they’re able to do so.

“If you look at this structure, it’s so beautiful in the sense that it’s hard but maneuverable, which is a tough challenge” for a drilling tool, said study leader Namrata Gundiah, a mechanical engineer at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India.

After female fig wasps deposit their eggs within the figs, they hatch into wasps that parasitize the larvae of other insects that feed off the fleshy fig insides. Typically, an insect’s ovipositor wouldn’t be strong enough to pierce the thick skin of unripened figs. Gundiah and her colleagues wondered how they were able to do it, hence the study, published in Journal of Experimental Biology.

They found that the wasp’s ovipositor tip looks and works like a drill bit, with tooth-shaped serrations that help in bore through the skin of the fruit. Using an electron microscope and x-ray detector, they found the x-ray signature of zinc, but only on the spoon-shaped tip. They believe the inclusion of zinc sufficiently hardens the tip to avoid breaking against the fig’s skin. The ovipositor can bend and flex, but it won’t fracture.

Gundiah says the wasp’s unique ovipositor might one day help inform engineers on new construction methods for things like needles, probes and other surgical tools.