It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Angeles National Forest firefighters during initial attack of the Eaton Fire. Photo by Christian Ruiz, US Forest Service.
Hypocritically, MSNOW and CNN express outrage at Donald Trump’s takeover of CBS. But do they serve another segment of the oligarchy? Advertisers, some of whom are cozy with the oligarch’s employee, Donald Trump?
Is this why a parade of white men on Morning Joe and CNN programs blamed the Eaton Fires on Karen Bass and not the Southern California Edison Company? Is it because Southern California Edison Company spends millions on advertising in the Los Angeles media market.
It’s bad enough that MSNOW uses the late Maya Angelou to advertise its product after firing Joy Reid, Melissa Harris-Perry, and Tiffany Cross, who said she was fired for offending Joe Scarborough. But now Bloomberg’s David Drucker, a Morning Joe regular, who said that Bass’s problems were “myriad,” failed to mention the power company’s role. They continue to blame Bass.
The federal government has filed two separate lawsuits against the Southern California Edison Company, alleging that the power firm’s infrastructure sparked two wildfires, including the devastating Eaton Fire.
In January, the Eaton Fire scorched nearly 14,000 acres in Los Angeles County and killed 19 people. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but the Justice Department says the deadly blaze “ignited from faulty power infrastructure or by sparks from faulty power infrastructure owned, maintained, and operated” by the utility company.
“But for Edison’s negligence, these fires would not have started,” Bill Essayli, the acting US attorney in Los Angeles, said at a press conference.
Wind and brush are forces of nature, not politics, and absolve Bass of responsibility for the fires. Karen Bass is no more responsible for the Palisades fire than former mayors Richard Riordan was for the Northridge Earthquake or Eugene Schmitz for the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. They prove nothing more than that disasters are a fact of California history.
The coverage of the mayor’s race also revealed that the media bosses still make money by spotlighting circus acts like the one offered by Mayor Bass’s opponent and elected Trump. Spencer Pratt is right at home with the MAGA cult. He blew $10 million preparing for a 2012 Mayan apocalypse.
Ismael Reed is using Go Fund Me to raise money for his new play,”King Ludd.”
Saturday, June 06, 2026
Thousands Of Earthquakes Reveal The Razor Edge Of Alaska’s Hidden Microplate
Australian National University seismologist Meghan Miller places a temporary seismic station in south-central Alaska. CREDIT: Sarah Roeske
Thousands of small earthquakes, detected for the first time by a machine learning process, reveal the distinct, razor-sharp edge to the Yakutat microplate as it subducts beneath the North America plate.
The Yakutat oceanic plateau is caught in the middle of a tectonic traffic jam with the Pacific plate as it subducts beneath the North American plate. The position and structure of the plates in this congested zone play a significant role in the earthquake and volcanic landscape of south-central Alaska.
The research published by Meghan Miller of Australian National University and her colleagues in The Seismic Record now shows the edge and extent of the Yakutat plate in astonishing detail.
Using data collected by permanent and temporary seismic stations, including a temporary array deployed by the researchers from 2018 to 2021, Miller and colleagues used a machine learning workflow to develop an expanded earthquake catalog for the region.
Their analysis revealed a 250-kilometer-long linear cluster of about 1750 earthquakes running northwest to southeast — a cluster that had never been identified in previous studies.
Using ambient seismic noise data to further map the region at depth, the researchers conclude the line of earthquakes marks the edge of the Yakutat microplate as it slips shallowly and directly under the North American plate, without an intervening mantle wedge as often occurs in subduction zones.
The new extent of the Yakutat microplate places it directly below the apex of curvature of the Alaska range and the Denali fault, the major continental fault system in south-central Alaska.
In their paper, Miller and colleagues propose that seismic stress caused by the collision could propagate through the overriding North American plate up to the Denali fault, and may have been the initial cause of the 2002 magnitude 7.9 Denali Fault earthquake.
Miller said the newly defined Yakutat edge fits well with an earlier study that used a different seismic signal, called tectonic tremor, to suggest the Yakutat plate extended farther eastward than previous estimates.
“This linear feature, that no one has seen before, basically lines up exactly where the end of this tremor signal,” Miller said. “It was putting all of these different pieces together that I think makes a really convincing argument to suggest that this is the edge of the Yakutat plate.”
The combination of tremor and earthquakes could mean that the composition of the Yakutat plate differs along its extent, the researchers noted.
Tremor west of the “razor edge” indicates a rock composition that allows slow, continuous slipping where stress can’t build up to create an earthquake. The edge of the plate defined by the earthquakes suggests a different composition in that part of the Yakutat plate “that allows brittle failure,” Miller said.
The new extent of the microplate also matches with the alignment of small volcanic cones around its northern and northeastern margins, suggesting that the missing mantle wedge between the Yakutat and North American plates may have begun to reestablish itself about 1 million years ago.
The next step for researchers will be to look further back in time, prior to 2018, to identify and locate more earthquakes along the Yakutat edge, and to also examine the configuration of the congested tectonic zone farther to the south, closer to the Alaskan coast.
Miller says the machine learning aspect of the study was essential to uncovering the Yakutat edge. “There’s a lot of information hidden in the data that we’re now able to extract out that we weren’t able to see as easily with more traditional methods.”
Wednesday, June 03, 2026
Fired Scott Pelley breaks silence with bombshell claim: CBS ordered him to put lies on air
Scott Pelley, the veteran CBS News correspondent fired this week after publicly accusing network leadership of "murdering" 60 Minutes, issued a formal statement Tuesday night detailing what he says drove him out — and the allegations are specific.
"New management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story," Pelley wrote. "I've been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them."
Pelley said the demands didn't stop there. Politicians, he wrote, had been invited to select which correspondents would conduct their interviews — a practice he called incompatible with basic journalistic standards. And he revealed that mismanagement had nearly killed an episode outright: the broadcast came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.
The statement named a culprit. The new owner of CBS, Pelley wrote, was dismantling the most successful program in television history "apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration."
As Raw Story reported Tuesday, Pelley was fired after confronting CBS News leadership in a staff meeting and accusing them of murdering the program. In his termination letter, CBS Executive Producer Nick Bilton said Pelley was dismissed "for cause" — a designation Pelley can challenge in court.
His new statement made clear he views the firing as part of a broader collapse. Senior leadership and two correspondents had already been cut before he was shown the door, he said, and "good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience."
None of it came during a ratings slump. 60 Minutes posted a 9 percent jump in viewers at the end of its 58th season — growth Pelley called "unheard-of."
"The collapse of values at the top has become untenable," he wrote. "The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well."
He closed after 37 years at CBS with a prayer "for a day when sanity, competence, and courage return."
Fired Scott Pelley Says ‘60 Minutes’ Under Bari Weiss Wanted ‘Falsehoods and Bias’ Injected
“Incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc,” said the veteran journalist as his 37-career with CBS News came to an end.
US journalist Scott Pelley attends a celebration of the announcement of CBS’s new Fall schedule at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, May 2, 2024. (Photo by Michael Tran/AFP via Getty Images)
Fired by the network where he had worked for nearly four decades on Tuesday night, veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley said in a statement that he had been directed by the new management team at CBS News, led by editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, “to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story” and also “told to include assertions that are unverified” in his reporting.
What looks like the collapse of “60 Minutes” has played out both behind closed doors at the network in recent months and publicly, with a series of high-profile firings of other longtime journalists and producers at the show. Details of internal meetings have been leaked, revealing serious tension between veteran members of the nation’s most-watched television news magazine and Weiss’ new management team.
“The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable,” Pelley said in his statement, released just hours after Nick Bilton, the show’s new executive producer appointed by Weiss last month, announced the firing. “The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.”
Bilton said in his statement that Pelley had been “terminated for cause effective immediately,” following a contentious staff meeting on Monday in which Pelley accused Weiss, who was not at the meeting, of being “brought in to kill” the program, not save it.
Despite “repeated attempts to have direct conversations with him over the weekend” and earlier on Tuesday, Bilton said, his efforts “to find common ground” with Pelley were not successful. “That was not the path Scott chose,” he said.
Pelley’s narrative of events was starkly different.
“Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause,” Pelley said in a statement sent to several news outlets. “Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.”
“For my part,” he continued, “new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.”
Pelley concluded: “I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.”
Bari Weiss just set off an 'underwater earthquake' at CBS by firing Scott Pelley: expert
CBS News head Bari Weiss at a conference in Idaho in July.
(Brendan McDermid/Reuters)
A media expert warned CBS chief Bari Weiss on Tuesday night that she just set off an "underwater earthquake" at her network by showing veteran journalist Scott Pelley the door.
Brian Stelter, CNN's chief media analyst, told Kaitlan Collins on "The Source" that Pelley's firing likely won't go over well within the CBS newsroom and could lead to a costly legal battle. In the termination letter, CBS Executive Producer Nick Bilton said Pelley was dismissed "for cause," which he can challenge in court.
"This is like an underwater earthquake at CBS News. It's not going to be visible on TV right away, but this is bound to have many ripple effects and maybe a legal battle," Stelter said.
Pelley had been a journalist with CBS News for more than four decades before he was dismissed on Tuesday. His firing came just one day after Pelley confronted CBS News leadership in a staff meeting and accused them of "murdering" the flagship show, "60 Minutes."
"Yesterday’s performative display of hostility — enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation — demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress,” Bolton wrote in the letter.
CBS Firings Called ‘Straight From an Authoritarian Handbook’ and Preview of Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger
The pending Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger “represents an existential threat to the free press, independent media, and free speech in this country and beyond,” warned several press freedom groups.
Free press advocates project messages opposing the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger on Jazz at Lincoln Center during the News and Documentary Emmy Awards on May 27, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Emmys Rapid Response Project)
A coalition of nine press freedom groups on Tuesday warned that last week’s firings of top journalists at CBS News’ “60 Minutes” were a “grotesque effort taken straight from an authoritarian handbook”—but emphasized that the dismissal of reporters who had pushed back against the Trump administration signaled danger for journalists across the media, particularly as a pending merger would hand control of CNN to the same billionaire family that how runs CBS.
The Coalition for Women in Journalism, Common Cause, Freedom of the Press Foundation, and Reporters Without Borders were among the groups that released a statement saying the firing of “60 Minutes” correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega—as well as two top executives—were meant to “appease a sitting president and dismantle one of the loudest voices in investigative journalism.”
But the groups emphasized that “this is only the beginning,” considering the fact that Warner Bros. Discovery recently voted in support of a $110 billion proposed merger with Paramount Skydance, owned by David Ellison, the son of President Donald Trump megadonor Larry Ellison. The deal could be finalized as soon as July.
Warner Bros. Discovery owns CNN, and media critics have warned the network could be headed for the same loss of editorial independence that CBS has faced since right-wing former opinion columnist took the helm of the latter network last year following the Paramount Skydance merger.
Since then, newly appointed editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has pulled from the air a “60 Minutes” segment that questioned the Trump administration’s explanation for the deportation of hundreds of immigrants to an El Salvador prison, personally booked guests for news programs, and called for programming that appeals to “centrist” viewers.
“Bari Weiss’ shameless actions fulfill the Ellisons’ commitment to President Trump to remake CBS to his liking,” said the groups on Tuesday. “Larry Ellison has reportedly promised to do the same at CNN if allowed to take control through the pending Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. Not because it makes any business sense, but because they seek to control the public discourse.”
“We have to make the story heard. It’s what ‘60 Minutes’ would have done; it’s what the Fourth Estate is tasked with doing; it’s what Trump and the Ellisons want to prevent. Don’t let them.”
The groups noted that the firings of Alfonsi, Vega, executive producer Tanya Simon, and executive editor Draggan Mihailovich came as more than 200 journalists and documentarians signed an open letter opposing the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger, citing concerns that the deal “would open the door to improper political meddling in journalists’ editorial decisions,” and noting that according to The Wall Street Journal, David Ellison has “promised President Donald Trump ‘sweeping changes’ at Warner-owned CNN—a frequent target of Trump’s ire.”
“Ellison will likely alter CNN’s editorial direction (not to mention meddle with HBO’s documentaries) to be more friendly to the administration, threatening press freedom,” said the signatories, including Wajahat Ali, Mehdi Hasan, and Alfonsi.
A separate letter organized by Democracy Defenders Fund has garnered signatures from over 1,000 actors, producers, directors, screenwriters, and other entertainment professionals.
“This transaction would further consolidate an already concentrated media landscape, reducing competition at a moment when our industries—and the audiences we serve—can least afford it,” reads the letter, which calls for state attorneys general to block the merger. “The result will be fewer opportunities for creators, fewer jobs across the production ecosystem, higher costs, and less choice for audiences in the United States and around the world. Alarmingly, this merger would reduce the number of major US film studios to just four.”
On Tuesday, the press freedom groups warned that the merger “represents an existential threat to the free press, independent media, and free speech in this country and beyond, and should not be allowed to move forward.”
“We cannot let this blow to the bedrock of our democracy be lost in the constant barrage of scandal, corruption, and abuse of power,” said the organizations. “We have to make the story heard. It’s what ‘60 Minutes’ would have done; it’s what the Fourth Estate is tasked with doing; it’s what Trump and the Ellisons want to prevent. Don’t let them.”
Japan keeps traditional samurai horse festival alive by adapting to climate change
For more than a millennium, Japan has celebrated its samurai heritage with armoured horseriders charging through the countryside during its annual Soma Nomaoi festival. Up until two years ago, the tradition was threatened by soaring summer temperatures brought on by climate change. Organisers have decided to adapt, relieving riders and horses alike by switching the event to the spring.
Japan's thousand-year-old samurai horse festival has survived wars, earthquakes and a nuclear disaster. Now it's battling a new challenge – climate change.
The Soma Nomaoi began as a way to train mounted warriors and it still looks the same a millennium later, with riders dressed in samurai armour competing in horseback events.
Until 2024, the festival took place at the height of Japan's gruelling summers, which had become so hot that riders and spectators were collapsing and horses dying of heatstroke.
That prompted organisers to switch the festival to the cooler temperatures of late May.
Mitsukiyo Monma, who has been taking part in the event for 54 years, told AFP that the change had given the festival a new lease of life.
"You have to wear a kimono under the armour, which is not like going out in just a T-shirt in the summer," said the 69-year-old, adding that he needed medical attention on a day when the mercury was close to 40C.
"Your clothes would be so soaked that you could wring out the sweat," he said.
"When the festival moved to May, it was the first time I could drink hot coffee before going out."
Scientists say climate change is making extreme weather events more frequent and severe, and temperatures around the world have soared in recent years.
Japan is no exception. Last year, the country had its hottest summer since records began in 1898.
Temperatures rising to 40C and above have become so common that Japan's weather agency recently created an official designation for them, labelling them "cruelly hot" days. 'Truly a samurai'
Such conditions are hardly ideal for the Soma Nomaoi, where participants compete on horseback in samurai armour weighing around 25 kg.
The main event starts with races around a flat, oval track, with riders carrying giant flags on their backs.
The festivities kept going even in the aftermath of a 2011 earthquake and tsunami that left over 18,000 people dead or missing and caused a devastating meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant.
Fumihiko Futakami, director of the Minamisoma City Museum, says the Soma Nomaoi was a source of comfort when he was evacuated to Tokyo after the disaster.
"Even for people who have left here and now live elsewhere, when they think of their hometown, they think of mounted warriors," he said.
"It's the identity of our town."
Uncertain future
The festival's warrior roots meant only samurai could take part until the feudal system was abolished in the late 19th century.
Women were admitted after World War II, and festival veteran Monma fulfilled a lifelong dream when his two granddaughters joined him for this year's event.
It took place under cloudy skies, with the temperature hovering around a pleasant 18C.
There was little chance of a repeat of the 2023 Soma Nomaoi, when more than 100 horses and dozens of people needed treatment for heatstroke, and two animals died.
"There isn't much shade anywhere, so I think this is the most comfortable temperature for everyone," said 25-year-old Haruto Inoue, who was visiting from nearby Tochigi to watch the festival for the first time.
"They look so cool in their samurai gear, racing through the mud and giving it everything they've got."
Anyone can participate in the Soma Nomaoi, but owning or hiring a horse is not cheap.
The number of participants is steadily declining, and Japan's ageing population is a major factor.
At the start and after three days: the top images show the uninjured spinal cord of a zebrafish; those in the middle show the injured spinal cord; and those at the bottom illustrate how the nerve cells grow thanks to the microrobots.
Spinal cord injuries can have devastating consequences for those affected. Nerve cells in the spinal cord rarely regenerate naturally, while scarring often prevents the regrowth of nerve fibres. Modern therapies attempt to influence implanted stem cells using electrical stimulation to promote the growth of new nerve cells. This approach has several drawbacks: it requires implanted electrodes, and the transplanted cells do not always survive or integrate properly into the existing tissue.
Cells and nanoparticles cleverly combined
Researchers in Zurich are pursuing a new approach, which they have published in the journal Nature Materials. This involves combining therapeutic stem cells with magnetoelectric nanoparticles in such a way that the cells can be guided magnetically to the precise site of an injury and stimulate the stem cells to accelerate repair.
To achieve this, the researchers created a biohybrid microrobot, which combines living neural progenitor cells (NPCs) with a technical component in the form of specially engineered nanoparticles. The NPCs are derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), which are regular body cells reprogrammed in the laboratory to regain stem cell properties. These iPS cells have the potential to differentiate into various types of nervous system cells.
The nanoparticles consist of two layers: an inner layer that responds to magnetic fields and an outer layer that converts this response into electrical signals. By combining these special nanoparticles with the progenitor cells, the researchers fabricate what are known as NPCbots.
After just thirty minutes, the NPCbots – each around six micrometres in size – are ready for use. “To scale up fabrication, we operate several lab-on-chip systems in parallel,” explains Hao Ye, senior scientist and the study’s first author. Depending on the test in question, the ETH researchers need hundreds of thousands of microrobots for cell-based studies and several million for animal experiments.
The researchers also tested the NPCbots on mice with completely severed spinal cords. Here, too, the results were very promising: after 28 days, the animals’ nerve cells had reconnected at the site of the injury. During this period, the treated mice exhibited increasingly normal movement patterns – their gait, stride length, coordination and exploratory behaviour improved significantly.
This result is particularly significant because, unlike in zebrafish, the mouse spinal cord does not normally regenerate. The treatment was well tolerated by the animals, with no evidence of any adverse effects or immune reactions.
Success through minimally invasive stimulation
These successes were made possible through electrical stimulation of stem cells, greatly enhancing their differentiation after transplantation. In this process, nanoparticles convert magnetic signals directly into electrical impulses that stimulate specific stem cells. When employing NPCbots, researchers need only apply external magnetic fields around the injury site, eliminating the need for implanted electrodes or cables in previous approaches. This is crucial because the spinal cord is extremely sensitive. “Microrobotic guidance makes the treatment more precise and minimally invasive,” Hao explains.
Magnetic fields are particularly well-suited for stimulating stem cells because they can penetrate tissue easily, and their frequency and field strength can be flexibly adjusted to the specific application. Once the progenitor cells have been stimulated and differentiated into nerve cells, the NPCbots essentially dissolve within the tissue. The researchers expect the nanoparticles to be stable and minimally reactive due to their barium titanate coating. Further studies will determine whether and how the particles are degraded or excreted over the long term.
The virtual environment (left) is created using real-world tomato farm images (right) manually obtained from camera data collected by agricultural robots.
Researchers at Osaka Metropolitan University have developed a method for creating realistic virtual tomato farms that automatically generate data for training agricultural AI systems. Their approach offers a way to overcome one of the most labor-intensive tasks in farming: harvesting the crops.
Currently, farmbots use object detection systems to locate tomatoes and artificial intelligence to decide whether they are ripe. However, the use of these systems in the field has been bottlenecked by difficulty training them.
AI systems require large amounts of labeled images, which must be gathered from real farms. The process is time consuming as each tomato has to be manually labeled by drawing bounding boxes and assigned a ripeness category. This process is further complicated by natural variations in lighting conditions, plant shapes, and growing environments between each farm and season.
To address this challenge, a research team led by Takuya Fujinaga of the Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka Metropolitan University, created a virtual agricultural environment, which automatically generates realistic tomato images and their corresponding AI training labels.
To make a virtual farm that closely resembled real conditions, the environment was reconstructed using images manually obtained from camera data collected by agricultural robots.
The team used advanced reconstruction methods to build detailed 3D models and Unreal Engine 5 software together with an emerging reconstruction technique known as 3D Gaussian Splatting to reproduce lighting, textures, and geometry. Their virtual agricultural environment created a simulation closer to real-world situations where leaves overlap tomatoes, lighting changes constantly, stems and shadows create clutter, and fruit are often partially hidden.
Using positional information, the system automatically generated labels showing where tomatoes appeared in each image and how ripe they were. The framework also automatically exported annotations in YOLO format, a widely used standard for AI object detection training.
The researchers used the synthetic datasets to train AI models and showed that they could effectively detect tomatoes in real-world images.
“By comparing differences in the shape of 3D tomato models, lighting conditions, and the amount of data, we identified conditions that affect AI accuracy,” Dr. Fujinaga said. “Understanding how lighting, tomato shape, and dataset size affect detection performance are important discoveries for improving the model in the future.”
“Although we studied tomatoes, similar factors are important in harvesting a wide range of agricultural products,” he added. “We are definitely excited about the potential of applying this method to crops other than tomatoes.”
The findings were published in Smart Agricultural Technology.
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About OMU
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Traditionally, robot control software is manually programmed by experts. This process is time-consuming and often inflexible: programmers must anticipate many possible situations in advance, yet real-world deployments can present unexpected events, from robot sensor failures in warehouse operations to the unpredictable conditions that arise during earthquake response.
The viewpoint argues that embedding foundation models into control software could enable robot swarms to achieve levels of autonomy, flexibility, and adaptability that have so far been out of reach. For this purpose, each robot would be equipped with onboard foundation models that process sensor inputs, such as camera images or temperature readings, and generate corresponding collective actions. This could allow swarms to adapt their behavior in real time, deviate from their original tasks when necessary, and interact more naturally with humans through speech or gestures. Consider a robot swarm monitoring a forest that suddenly locates an injured person. Thanks to the foundation model-based control, the swarm could autonomously switch to the more urgent task of providing assistance — not because it was explicitly programmed to do so but because the situation demanded it.
Before this vision can become a reality, swarm robotics research still needs to overcome hardware limitations and better understand how foundation models can translate the behavior of individual robots into coordinated actions at the swarm level. Security also presents a serious concern. For example, hallucinated outputs, where a foundation model generates plausible but incorrect information, could pose significant reliability issues. The researchers therefore advocate a balanced research approach that considers both the possibilities and the associated risks, incorporating them into a comprehensive ethics-by-design framework.
Researchers have developed a fish-like robot that shows how some species of modern fish are able to walk on land, and could help unravel how early vertebrates evolved similar abilities hundreds of millions of years ago.
Researchers have developed a fish-like robot that shows how some species of modern fish are able to walk on land, and could help unravel how early vertebrates evolved similar abilities hundreds of millions of years ago.
Using a combination of their ‘walking fish’ robot and computer models based on observations of real fish, the researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, found that a wide range of unrelated species have independently evolved the same basic walking gait, which essentially mimics a swimming motion on land.
This simple walking pattern, which the researchers call an ‘undulating tripod gait’, looks flopping and clumsy, but is actually one of life’s most ancient solutions to a problem: how to escape predators or move from one habitat to another, without specialised limbs.
The gait is mechanically simple – fish propel themselves forward with their tails while using their front fins or head for support – and re-emerges in unrelated fish species, from the African lungfish to armoured catfish. Although individual species of walking fish are well-studied, this is the first time that unifying locomotive principles across multiple species have been identified.
This plausible example of convergent evolution – where different species evolve similar abilities independently – could also help researchers understand how vertebrates first made the transition from water to land, one of the most significant events in the history of life on Earth. The results are reported in the journal Nature Communications.
Several species of living fish, including bichirs, lungfish, catfish, sculpin and snakeheads, are capable of walking on land. While they are far more efficient in the water, having an extra mode of locomotion they can use when needed is an evolutionary benefit.
“If you’ve got the ability to walk on land and your predator doesn’t, then you can escape and hopefully the predator moves on,” said lead author Dr Michael Ishida, from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “You’ve also got the ability to move from one shallow-water environment to another, like tide pools for example.”
Ishida, an engineer in Professor Fumiya Iida’s lab at Cambridge, worked together with biologists and palaeontologists to study how modern fish walk, and whether those results could be used to help determine how ancient fish made the transition from water to land.
The researchers first created a computer model based on the movements of Polypterus senegalus, a grey bichir native to Africa, and several other walking fish. The model found similar modes of locomotion across several different species.
“We kept seeing this recurring kind of walking motion, although it’s very primitive,” said Ishida. “A number of different fish, spread out across the evolutionary tree, and not closely related to each other, all do it. It’s such a simple movement and can recur from a very basic starting point.”
Ishida and his colleagues called this walking motion an undulating tripod gait: the fish anchors its body with the front fins or head, and uses its tail to push the body forward around that anchor point.
“It looks like a swimming fish dumped onto land,” said Ishida. “A swimming fish uses its body to propel itself through the water, so if you take that, put it on land, give it some ability to shuffle its front fins, that’s exactly what it’s doing.”
The researchers then built a physical robot fish to test their results, and found that the most efficient movement closely matched the bichir’s movements and the results from the computer model.
“We tried all kinds of different gaits on the robot, and every other gait we tried was slower,” said Ishida. “Any time we changed how the body bended, or what sequence it was bended in, it was worse. It was surprising that the optimal walking pattern in the simulation and robot matched what the real fish actually do.”
The researchers say that future work in this area could be applied to fossil fish like Tiktaalik, an important fossil link in the transition from water to land. A similar combination of computer modelling and robotics could help determine how these ancient species first walked on land.
Researchers have developed a fish-like robot that shows how some species of modern fish are able to walk on land, and could help unravel how early vertebrates evolved similar abilities hundreds of millions of years ago.
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