laffa sponge is a light-weight natural material for various engineering application such as packaging,acoustic and vibration isolation,and impact energy absorption. the strain rates effect is an important material property for such application. in the present study, compressive test at different strain rates on luffa sponge material were conducted over a wide density range from 24 to 64 .a photographic technique was applied to measure the sectional area which has an irregular shape .the stress-strain curves of luffa sponge material at various strain rates were calculated based on this measurement. when the dynamic data are compared with those of quasi-static experiments,it is found that the compressive strength,plateau stress and specific energy absorption of the luffa sponge material are all sensitive to the rate of loading.