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Thursday, April 29, 2021

Baby Mantis Shrimp Can Throw Knockout Punches at Just 9 Days Old

Side view of an 11-day-old mantis shrimp larva. (Jacob Harrison)

NICOLETTA LANESE, LIVESCIENCE
30 APRIL 2021

Mantis shrimp wield a spring-loaded appendage that punches through water with explosive force - and their babies can start swinging just nine days after they hatch.

In a new study, published Thursday (April 29) in the Journal of Experimental Biology, scientists studied larval Philippine mantis shrimp (Gonodactylaceus falcatus) originally collected from Oahu, Hawaii.

The team also reared some of the same species from eggs, carefully monitoring their development through time and then zooming in on their punching appendage under the microscope.

The appendage, called the raptorial appendage, works similarly to a bow and arrow, in that the tip of the appendage gets pulled back, "nocked" against a spring-like mechanism and then let loose in a sudden release of elastic energy, said first author Jacob Harrison, a graduate student in the biology program at Duke University.

"While we have a pretty great understanding of how it functions in the adults … we didn't really have a solid understanding of how it develops," Harrison told Live Science.

Related: Smash! Super-stabby mantis shrimp shows off in video

Now, in a "remarkably complete and carefully controlled" study, Harrison and his team have started to unravel the mystery of when mantis shrimp start throwing down like lightning-fast boxers, said Roy Caldwell, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the study.

A larval mantis shrimp punching at 20,000 frames per second. (The Company of Biologists, Harrison et al., J. Exp. Biol., 2021)

And furthermore, since larval mantis shrimp have transparent shells, "what's new about this study is [that] the transparency of the raptorial apparatus allows them to see in great detail exactly what's going on," Caldwell said.

"That hasn't been possible in looking at adults," whose exoskeleton is opaque, he said.

Slower than expected, but still impressive

When adult mantis shrimp unleash a flurry of strikes, the tips of their appendages can slice through the water at about 50 mph (80 km/h), according to National Geographic.

But a mathematical model, published in 2018 in the journal Science, hinted that baby mantis shrimp might throw even faster punches than adults, assuming they take up boxing at a young age.

This model, developed in the same lab Harrison works in, zoomed in on the spring mechanism mantis shrimp use to deliver punishing blows.

"We see these mechanisms all over biology," from jumping frogs and insects to stinging jellyfish that fire venom-filled capsules into their prey, Harrison noted.

The model hinted that these spring-loaded mechanisms should generally become less efficient at larger scales, and therefore, smaller springs with less mass should generate higher acceleration when let loose.

Another model that specifically focused on mantis shrimp revealed a similar result, indicating that larger mantis shrimp species strike more slowly than smaller species, the researchers reported in 2016 in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

Harrison and his team wanted to see if these models held up in larval mantis shrimp, since of course, they're smaller than adults of their species. So the team searched for tiny, translucent mantis shrimp in Hawaii in the dead of night.

"If you go out where you can find adult mantis shrimp, you can actually stick a light in the water, and mantis shrimp will come like a moth to a flame," Harrison said. That said, larval crabs, shrimp and fish also flock to the light and get scooped up in the same buckets as the mantis shrimp; so therein lies the challenge.

These free-swimming shrimp larvae had matured enough to exit the burrow in which they hatched, so they tended to be at least 9 to 14 days old at the time of capture, Harrison noted.

To collect data on even younger mantis shrimp, Harrison also collected an egg clutch from a female G. falcatus found at Wailupe Beach Park. The eggs hatched in transit on their way to Duke University, but the team still managed to raise the puny mantis shrimp for 28 days in their lab.

Related: Six bizarre feeding tactics from the depths of our oceans

With mantis shrimp in hand, the team carefully observed how the larvae developed through time. G. falcatus larvae were previously known to progress through six larval stages, each marked by the larva molting its exoskeleton. The team found that, in the first and second larval stages, the larvae huddled together at the bottom of the tank; by the third stage, they began swimming but did not throw any punches.

But by the fourth stage, around day 9 to 14, "larvae began striking and 'waving' their raptorial appendages as they swam through the water," the authors wrote in their report.

At this point, the raptorial appendages had fully formed and closely resembled an adult's, in terms of structure, and the larvae also began snacking on larval brine shrimp that the team provided. Each larva measured about the size of a grain of rice at this juncture.

The team shot high-speed, high-resolution video of the strikes by the older larval mantis shrimp they'd scooped from the ocean, to see just how they hurl their appendages through water. This required placing the rice-size larvae into a custom rig and securing them with glue, so they'd stay in frame and in focus.

The footage enabled the team to not only examine the speed and mechanics of each punch, but also to watch as elements of the spring mechanism slid to and fro under the transparent exoskeleton.

"What we found was that they could produce really high accelerations and velocities relative to their body size," Harrison said.

These metrics specifically measure how rapidly the larvae appendages can transition from stillness to striking, so in this respect, the larvae were "roughly on par with a lot of the adult species," he said.

However, in terms of their overall speed, the larval strikes only traveled about 0.9 mph (1.4 k/h) - an order of magnitude slower than the adult strikes.

"The finding that was a little bit surprising was that the speed of the strike is less than what we see in adults," Caldwell said.

This difference in speed may be related to the actual materials making up the spring, he said; perhaps the spring itself or the "latch" that nocks the appendage in place, differs in larval and adult mantis shrimp, limiting the amount of elastic energy that the larvae can deploy.

Related: Dangers in the deep: 10 scariest sea creatures

The water surrounding the mantis shrimp may also impact their striking speed, Harrison suggested.

To teeny marine creatures, like larvae, water feels quite viscous, more like molasses than water as we experience it, he said. It may be that, as mantis shrimp mature, they can better overcome the stickiness of the water and execute faster strikes.

And despite being slower than adults, the larvae still threw punches that were five to 10 times faster than the reported swimming speeds of similarly sized organisms and more than 150 times faster than their favorite brine shrimp snacks can swim, the authors wrote.

Evolutionarily, there may not be much pressure for larvae to increase their striking speed before reaching maturity, Caldwell said.

The study is also limited in that the team only collected video of defensive strikes, provoked by irritating the larvae with a toothpick, Caldwell noted. "We know, in adults, there's considerable ability to modulate the strength of the strike depending on what it's being used for," whether that be defense, or capturing or stabbing prey, he said. So the speed of the strike may differ somewhat, depending on its purpose.

Looking forward, Harrison and his team plan to probe what factors limit the larval mantis shrimps' striking speed, as well as when the shrimp overcome this limitation in the course of development, he said. They also want to examine whether the raptorial appendage develops similarly across the hundreds of mantis shrimp species, he added.

"The larval stomatopods," another term for mantis shrimp, "are basically a black box, we know very little about them," Caldwell noted. "Almost anything done on larval stomatopods is new and interesting … They've just literally scratched the surface in terms of looking at morphology."

Related Content:

Image gallery: Magnificent mantis shrimp

Photos: The amazing eyes of the mantis shrimp

Photos: Ancient shrimp-like critter was tiny but fierce

This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.

Saturday, July 09, 2022

‘Slice human fingers to the bone’: Meet the potentially dangerous mantis shrimp found in SC waters

ALEX CASON

Sarah Claire McDonald
Fri, July 8, 2022

Among the shrimp species that surround South Carolina’s coast, mantis shrimp stand out as most notable of them all.

Not even technically a shrimp, mantis shrimp, or stomatopods, are distant relatives of crabs, lobsters and shrimp. They get their name because this carnivorous marine crustacean resembles a mix between a praying mantis and a shrimp. Occasionally, they can even be described as appearing similar to a lobster.

Often seen in local waters along the state’s coast and along the Southeastern U.S., the mantis shrimp can be found in shallow tropical or subtropical waters.

“The mantis shrimp (not a true shrimp) is a flattened, inshore crustacean sometimes incorrectly called ‘rock shrimp,’” says SCDNR about the species.
-
“Mantis shrimpcan be eaten, but have little meat of poor quality,” SCDNR continues.

With over 450 species of mantis shrimp worldwide, they are a common sight seen in a variety of different colors and can grow anywhere from 12 to 15 inches in length.

They can be found along coastal shores, usually living in an abandoned burrow, sometimes U-shaped and move in and out to capture nearby prey when spotted. The fast and vicious stomatopods can also live in coral reefs or rock crevices. Depending on the specific mantis shrimp species, these marine critters can be active during the day or live nocturnally.

Mantis shrimp spend a majority of their lives living in burrows, reefs or crevices and generally only leave to mate or hunt for nearby food sources. Mantis shrimp act as an ecological importance to their coral reefs. This is because they are incredibly sensitive to surrounding environmental pollutants and their behavior can indicate when conditions may be poor.

“They have a unique set of “thumb splitters” or small appendages that they use to break or crack open shells of other crustaceans to retrieve food and nutrients. They are the fastest known organism due to their quick jabbing appendages that can reach up to 170 mph,” according to Lamar University.

These appendages can be used in two separate ways, generally seen through hunting and attacking in the species.

“There are two main types of hunting for mantis shrimp: spearing and smashing. Smashing mantis shrimp have calcified forelimbs that they use to administer a powerful strike to both predators and prey. Spearing mantis shrimp have sharp forelimbs they use to pierce predators and prey,” according to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

Fishermen and marine specialists alike have stated that the mantis shrimp’s claw is dangerous, and caution is necessary to avoid getting hurt.

“The title of fastest punch in the animal kingdom firmly belongs to the peacock mantis shrimp, whose club-like appendages reach the speed of a .22-caliber slug, shatter clamshells with ease and can slice human fingers to the bone,” wrote The Washington Post.

Mantis shrimp can act aggressively, and their jabs and blows have been described as “devastating” to their prey or to many that choose to spar with one.

Monday, November 02, 2020

There’s no place like the perfectly sized home for the mighty mantis shrimp

Mantis shrimp will fight longer and harder, and often win, for burrows of ideal size.

JENNIFER OUELLETTE - 10/29/2020

"Nice burrow you have there. I want it." Patrick Green of the University of Exeter filmed this fight between mantis shrimp.

Size matters to the small-but-mighty mantis shrimp, which show a marked preference for burrows in coral rubble with volumes that closely match their own body size or are just a bit larger—in other words, large enough to accommodate their body, but small enough that they can defend the entrance. But according to a new paper published in the journal Animal Behavior, sometimes a mantis shrimp will compromise. If a burrow is already occupied and is close to the ideal size, or a bit smaller, the mantis shrimp will fight longer and harder for that burrow—and be more likely to win the contest.

As we previously reported, mantis shrimp come in many different varieties: there are some 450 known species. But they can generally be grouped into two types: those that stab their prey with spear-like appendages ("spearers") and those that smash their prey ("smashers") with large, rounded, and hammer-like claws ("raptorial appendages"). Those strikes are so fast—as much as 23 meters per second, or 51mph—and powerful, they often produce cavitation bubbles in the water, creating a shock wave that can serve as a follow-up strike, stunning and sometimes killing the prey. Sometimes a strike can even produce sonoluminescence, whereby the cavitation bubbles produce a brief flash of light as they collapse.

A 2018 study found that the secret to that powerful punch seems to arise not from bulky muscles but from the spring-loaded anatomical structure of the shrimp's arms, akin to a bow and arrow. The shrimp's muscles pull on a saddle-shaped structure in the arm, causing it to bend and store potential energy, which is released with the swinging of the club-like claw. And earlier this year, scientists discovered that, counterintuitively, the mantis shrimp punches at half the speed in air, suggesting that the animal can precisely control its striking behavior, depending on the surrounding medium.
“Resource value assessment”

Patrick Green of the University of Exeter and J.S. Harrison of Duke University—authors of the new paper in Animal Behavior—were interested in exploring what's known as "resource value assessment" in mantis shrimp of the smashing variety (Neogonodactylus bredini). Both male and female mantis shrimp in this species are known to compete over coral rubble burrows, which provide protection from predators and a safe space to mate and brood eggs. If a preferred burrow is already occupied, it can trigger a fight over who gets the burrow. Those competitions typically involve a ritualized exchange of high-force strikes (mantis shrimp SMASH!), with the defending mantis shrimp also using its armored tailplate to block the burrow entrance from intruders.

These sorts of animal competitions are quite common in nature, and animals seem to be able to assess the value of such "contested resources" and adjust their behavior accordingly. Such encounters are typically described in terms of a linear or categorical value assessment, in which, for example, males will fight more aggressively in the presence of females. Similarly, female parasitoid wasps will compete over the most desirable hosts in which to lay their eggs. The larger the host, the more food will be available for the offspring when they hatch, for example. Past studies have suggested that a female's egg load seems to be a contributing factor (or selective force) in how aggressively they fight over a potential host and how likely they are to win such a competition.

Enlarge / An intruder potentially assessing a burrow.
Roy Caldwell

Past studies have shown that mantis shrimp pick burrows whose sizes (volume) mesh well with their own body size (mass), as do hermit crabs. In the case of hermit crabs, there seems to be a tradeoff at play when it comes to resource assessment: dragging around a larger shell requires more energy but offers more protection from predators, while the reverse is true for smaller shells. Green and Harrison suggest that, when it comes to competing for a desired shell, hermit crabs may prefer shells that are the preferred size or slightly larger, while placing less value on shells that are much larger or smaller.

This would be an example of quadratic resource value assessment, in which resources are valued most highly at a certain peak level. That value decreases in either direction from that peak. In other words, there is an optimal sweet spot, or "Goldilocks zone," where an asset is deemed to be "just right" and the animal will adapt its behavior accordingly—e.g., by fighting more aggressively when such a desirable asset is contested. Green and Harrison thought a similar quadratic resource value assessment might also apply to mantis shrimp—namely, that mantis shrimp would place a higher value on burrows with an ideal volume and would be more aggressive, and more likely to win, when fighting for control of such burrows.

To test their hypothesis, the researchers conducted two sets of experiments: "choice experiments," where mantis shrimp could freely choose unoccupied burrows of varying sizes, and "staged contests," where "defending" and "intruding" mantis shrimp were randomly matched in a competition over a preferred burrow. Green and Harrison predicted that their experiments would show that competitors would fight longer and harder and would be more likely to win when their body length closely matched the volume of the contested burrow—and that these factors would decrease the further that match deviated from the ideal, in either direction.

“This study is an example of maximum effort being reserved for something that’s ‘just right.’”

The researchers built mock burrows out of clear plastic tubing with a single opening, wrapped in black vinyl, with a clear area at the top to enable them to observe what was happening inside. The mantis shrimp were collected from burrows in seagrass beds along the Caribbean coast of Panama. The researchers also videotaped the staged contests (a total of 36) and intervened if it seemed like one of the fighting shrimp was in danger of significant injury or death.

They found that, overall, the occupying mantis shrimps successfully defended their burrows from intruders in 69 percent of the fights. But those odds changed dramatically in cases where the intruding mantis shrimp were competing for burrows slightly smaller than their ideal size; intruders won 67 percent of the fights in those circumstances, typically by striking first and striking more often.

"We know that animals can assess a variety of factors, including the size of the opponent and the value of the prize, when deciding whether to fight and how hard to fight," said Green of the results. "In this case, as a smaller burrow is probably occupied by a smaller opponent, it seems mantis shrimps will compromise on the size of the home if it means an easier fight. It might be assumed that animals fight hardest for the biggest assets, but this study is an example of maximum effort being reserved for something that's 'just right.'"

There were some caveats, most notably sample-size constraints. Green and Harrison also acknowledged that the mock burrows were standardized, with set lengths and diameters, unlike naturally occurring burrows, which usually have more variable dimensions. And the smooth tubing is markedly different from the natural burrows formed in rock and rubble.

"Mantis shrimp are adept modifiers of natural burrows, using appendage strikes to widen too-narrow burrows and using rock and sand to fill in too-large burrows," they wrote. "While the individuals we tested could not widen mock burrows by striking, perhaps with more time in which to establish residency, individuals would have filled in larger mock burrows."

DOI: Animal Behavior, 2020. 10.1016/j.anbehav.2020.09.014 (About DOIs).

Listing image by Roy Caldwell

Friday, February 07, 2025

Mantis shrimp clubs filter sound to mitigate damage

Patterned armor selectively blocks high-frequency stress waves

Northwestern University

Known for their powerful punch, mantis shrimp can smash a shell with the force of a .22 caliber bullet. Yet, amazingly, these tough critters remain intact despite the intense shockwaves created by their own strikes.

Northwestern University researchers have discovered how mantis shrimp remain impervious to their own punches. Their fists, or dactyl clubs, are covered in layered patterns, which selectively filter out sound. By blocking specific vibrations, the patterns act like a shield against self-generated shockwaves.

The study will be published on Friday (Feb. 7) in the journal Science.

The findings someday could be applied to developing synthetic, sound-filtering materials for protective gear as well as inspire new approaches to reducing blast-related injuries in military and sports.

“The mantis shrimp is known for its incredibly powerful strike, which can break mollusk shells and even crack aquarium glass,” said Northwestern’s Horacio D. Espinosa, the study’s co-corresponding author. “However, to repeatedly execute these high-impact strikes, the mantis shrimp’s dactyl club must have a robust protection mechanism to prevent self-damage. Most prior work has focused on the club’s toughness and crack resistance, treating the structure as a toughened impact shield. We found it uses phononic mechanisms — structures that selectively filter stress waves. This enables the shrimp to preserve its striking ability over multiple impacts and prevent soft tissue damage.”

An expert on bio-inspired materials, Espinosa is the James N. and Nancy J. Farley Professor in Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship and a professor of mechanical engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering, where he directs the Institute for Cellular Engineering Technologies. Espinosa led the study in partnership with M. Abi Ghanem of the Institute of Light and Matter, a joint research unit between Claude-Bernard-Lyon-I University and the Center for National Scientific Research in France.

A devastating blow

Living in shallow, tropical waters, mantis shrimp are armed with one hammer-like dactyl club on each side of its body. These clubs store energy in elastic, spring-like structures, which are held in place by latch-like tendons. When the latch is released, the stored energy, too, is released — propelling the club forward with explosive force.

With a single blow, mantis shrimp can slaughter prey or defend their territory from interloping competitors. As the punch rips through surrounding water, it creates a low-pressure zone behind it, causing a bubble to form.

“When the mantis shrimp strikes, the impact generates pressure waves onto its target,” Espinosa said. “It also creates bubbles, which rapidly collapse to produce shockwaves in the megahertz range. The collapse of these bubbles releases intense bursts of energy, which travel through the shrimp’s club. This secondary shockwave effect, along with the initial impact force, makes the mantis shrimp’s strike even more devastating.”

Protective patterns

Surprisingly, this force does not damage the shrimp’s delicate nerves and tissues, which are encased within its armor.

To investigate this phenomenon, Espinosa and colleagues used two advanced techniques to examine the mantis shrimp’s armor in fine detail. First, they applied transient grating spectroscopy, a laser-based method that analyzes how stress waves propagate through materials. Second, they employed picosecond laser ultrasonics, which provide further insights into the armor’s microstructure.

Their experiments revealed two distinct regions — each engineered for a specific function — within the mantis shrimp’s club. The impact region, responsible for delivering crushing blows, consists of mineralized fibers arranged in a herringbone pattern, giving it resistance to failure. Beneath this layer, the periodic region features twisted, corkscrew-like fiber bundles. These bundles form a Bouligand structure, a layered arrangement, in which each layer is progressively rotated relative to its neighbors.

While the herringbone pattern reinforces the club against fractures, the corkscrew arrangement governs how stress waves travel through the structure. This intricate design acts as a phononic shield, selectively filtering high-frequency stress waves to prevent damaging vibrations from propagating back into the shrimp’s arm and body.

“The periodic region plays a crucial role in selectively filtering out high-frequency shear waves, which are particularly damaging to biological tissues” Espinosa said. “This effectively shields the shrimp from damaging stress waves caused by the direct impact and bubble collapse.”

In this study, the researchers analyzed 2D simulations of wave behavior. Espinosa said 3D simulations are needed to fully understand the club’s complex structure.

“Future research should focus on more complex 3D simulations to fully capture how the club’s structure interacts with shockwaves,” Espinosa said. “Additionally, designing aquatic experiments with state-of-the-art instrumentation would allow us to investigate how phononic properties function in submerged conditions.”

The study, “Does the mantis shrimp pack a phononic shield?” was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation.

Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adq7100

Article Title

Does the mantis shrimp pack a phononic shield?

Article Publication Date

7-Feb-2025

Monday, September 13, 2021

Small, mighty robots mimic the powerful punch of mantis shrimp

Robot models the mechanics of the strongest punch in the animal kingdom

Peer-Reviewed Publication

U.S. ARMY RESEARCH LABORATORY

Small, mighty robots mimic the powerful punch of mantis shrimp — IMAGE: RESEARCHERS WITH ARMY FUNDING BUILD A ROBOT THAT MIMICS THE STRONG PUNCH OF A MANTIS SHRIMP. view more
CREDIT: SECOND BAY STUDIOS AND ROY CALDWELL/HARVARD SEAS

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- Modeling the mechanics of the strongest punch in the animal kingdom, researchers with U.S. Army funding built a robot that mimics the movement of the mantis shrimp. These pugnacious crustaceans could pave the way for small, but mighty robotic devices for the military.

Researchers at Harvard University and Duke University, published their work in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They shed light on the biology of mantis shrimp, whose club-like appendages accelerate faster than a bullet out of a gun. Just one strike can knock the arm off a crab or break through a snail shell. These crustaceans have even taken on an octopus and won.

“The idea of a loaded spring released by a latch is a staple in mechanical design, but the research team cleverly observed that engineers have yet to achieve the same performance out of a Latch-Mediated Spring Actuator that we find in nature,” said Dr. Dean Culver program manager, U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory. “By more closely mimicking the geometry of a mantis shrimp's physiology, the team was able to exceed accelerations produced by limbs in other robotic devices by more than tenfold.”

How mantis shrimp produce these deadly, ultra-fast movements has long fascinated biologists. Recent advancements in high-speed imaging make it possible to see and measure these strikes, but some of the mechanics have not been well understood.

Many small organisms, including frogs, chameleons, and even some kinds of plants, produce ultra-fast movements by storing elastic energy and rapidly releasing it through a latching mechanism, like a mouse trap. In mantis shrimp, two small structures embedded in the tendons of the muscles called sclerites act as the appendage’s latch. In a typical spring-loaded mechanism, once the physical latch is removed, the spring would immediately release the stored energy, but when the sclerites unlatch in a mantis shrimp appendage, there is a short but noticeable delay.

“When you look at the striking process on an ultra-high-speed camera, there is a time delay between when the sclerites release and the appendage fires,” said Nak-seung Hyun, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and co-first author of the paper. “It is as if a mouse triggered a mouse trap, but instead of it snapping right away, there was a noticeable delay before it snapped. There is obviously another mechanism holding the appendage in place, but no one has been able to analytically understand how the other mechanism works.”

Biologists have hypothesized that while the sclerites initiate unlatching, the geometry of the appendage itself acts as a secondary latch, controlling the movement of the arm while it continues to store energy. But this theory had not yet been tested.

The research team tested this hypothesis first by studying the linkage mechanics of the system, then building a physical, robotic model. Once they had the robot, the team was able to develop a mathematical model of the movement. The researchers mapped four distinct phases of the mantis strike, starting with the latched sclerites and ending with the actual strike of the appendage. They found that, indeed, after the sclerites unlatch, geometry of the mechanism takes over, holding the appendage in place until it reaches an over-centering point and then the latch releases.

“This process controls the release of stored elastic energy and actually enhances the mechanical output of the system,” said Emma Steinhardt, a graduate student at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and first author of the paper. “The geometric latching process reveals how organisms generate extremely high acceleration in these short duration movements, like punches.”

The device is faster than any similar devices at the same scale to date.

“This study exemplifies how interdisciplinary collaborations can yield discoveries for multiple fields,” said co-author Dr. Sheila Patek, professor of biology at Duke University. “The process of building a physical model and developing the mathematical model led us to revisit our understanding of mantis shrimp strike mechanics and, more broadly, to discover how organisms and synthetic systems can use geometry to control extreme energy flow during ultra-fast, repeated-use, movements.”

This approach of combining physical and analytical models could help biologists understand and roboticists mimic some of nature’s other extraordinary feats, such as how trap jaw ants snap their jaws so quickly or how frogs propel themselves so high.

“Actuator architecture like this offers impressive capabilities to small and lightweight mechanisms that need to deliver impulsive forces for the Army,” Culver said. “But I think there's a broader takeaway here - something the engineering community and defense research can keep in mind. We're not done learning about mechanical performance from nature and biological systems. Things we take for granted, like a simple sprung actuator, are still ripe for further investigation at many scales."

Visit the laboratory's Media Center to discover more Army science and technology stories

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As the Army’s foundational research laboratory, ARL is operationalizing science to achieve transformational overmatch. Through collaboration across the command’s core technical competencies, DEVCOM leads in the discovery, development and delivery of the technology-based capabilities required to make Soldiers more successful at winning the nation’s wars and come home safely. DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory is an element of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command. DEVCOM is a major subordinate command of the Army Futures Command.

JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2026833118

ARTICLE TITLE

A physical model of mantis shrimp for exploring the dynamics of ultrafast systems

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Aug-2021

Monday, October 11, 2021

What Even Counts as Science Writing Anymore?

The pandemic made it clear that science touches everything, and everything touches science.

By Ed Yong
THE ATLANTIC

Getty; The Atlantic
OCTOBER 2, 2021

LONG READ

I entered 2020 thinking of myself as a science writer. I ended the year less sure.

While the first sparks of the COVID-19 pandemic ignited at the end of 2019, I was traipsing through a hillside in search of radio-tagged rattlesnakes, allowing myself to get electrocuted by an electric catfish, and cradling loggerhead-turtle hatchlings in the palm of my hand. As 2020 began and the new coronavirus commenced its ruinous sweep of the world, I was marveling at migratory moths and getting punched in the pinky by a very small and yet surprisingly powerful mantis shrimp. We share a reality with these creatures, but we experience it in profoundly different ways. The rattlesnake can sense—perhaps see—the body heat of its mammalian prey. The catfish can detect the electric fields that other animals involuntarily produce. The moths and the turtles can both sense the magnetic field of the planet and use it to guide their long navigations. The mantis shrimp sees forms of light that we cannot, and it processes colors in a way that no one fully understands. Each species has its own unique coterie of senses. Each is privy to its own narrow slice of the total sights, smells, sounds, and other stimuli that pervade the planet.

This article was excerpted from The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021.

My plan was to write a book about those sensory experiences—a travelogue that would take people through the mind of a bat, a bird, or a spider. Such a journey, “not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes,” as Marcel Proust once said, is “the only true voyage.”

It quickly became the only voyage I could make. As the pandemic spread, the possibility of international travel disappeared. Commuting turned from daily reality to fading memory. Restaurants, bars, and public spaces closed. Social gatherings became smaller, infrequent, and subject to barriers of cloth and distance. My world contracted to the radius of a few blocks, but the sensory worlds of other animals stayed open, magical and Narnia-like, accessible through the act of writing.

When I had to pause my book leave to report full-time on the pandemic, those worlds closed too.

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In theory, 2020 should have been a banner year for science writers. A virus upended the world and gripped its attention. Arcana of epidemiology and immunology—super-spreading, herd immunity, cytokine storms, mRNA vaccines—became dinner-table fodder. Public-health experts (and pseudo-experts) gained massive followings on social media. Anthony Fauci became a household name. The biggest story of the year—perhaps of the decade—was a science story, and science writers seemed ideally placed to tell it.

Read: Why the coronavirus is so confusing

When done properly, covering science trains a writer to bring clarity to complexity, to embrace nuance, to understand that everything new is built upon old foundations, and to probe the unknown while delimiting the bounds of their own ignorance. The best science writers learn that science is not a procession of facts and breakthroughs, but an erratic stumble toward gradually diminished uncertainty; that peer-reviewed publications are not gospel and even prestigious journals are polluted by nonsense; and that the scientific endeavor is plagued by all-too-human failings such as hubris. All of these qualities should have been invaluable in the midst of a global calamity, where clear explanations were needed, misinformation was rife, and answers were in high demand but short supply.

But the pandemic hasn’t just been a science story. It is an omnicrisis that has warped and upended every aspect of our lives. While the virus assaulted our cells, it also besieged our societies, seeping into every crack and exploiting every weakness it could find. It found many. To understand why the United States has fared so badly against COVID-19, despite its enormous wealth and biomedical savvy, one must understand not just matters of virology but also the nation’s history of racism and genocide, its carceral state, its nursing homes, its historical attitudes toward medicine and health, its national idiosyncrasies, the algorithms that govern social media, and the grossly deficient character of its 45th president. I barely covered any of these issues in an 8,000-word piece I wrote for The At lantic in 2018 about whether the United States was ready for the next pandemic. When this pandemic started, my background as a science writer, and one who had specifically reported on pandemics, was undoubtedly useful, but to a limited degree—it gave me a half-mile head start, with a full marathon left to run. Throughout the year, many of my peers caviled about journalists from other beats who wrote about the pandemic without a foundation of expertise. But does anyone truly have the expertise to cover an omnicrisis that, by extension, is also an omnistory?

The all-encompassing nature of epidemics was clear to the German physician Rudolf Virchow, who investigated a typhus outbreak in 1848. Virchow knew nothing about the pathogen responsible for typhus, but he correctly realized that the outbreak was possible only because of poverty, malnutrition, poor sanitation, dangerous working conditions, and inequities perpetuated by incompetent politicians and negligent aristocrats. “Medicine is a social science and politics is nothing but medicine in larger scale,” Virchow wrote.

This viewpoint was championed by many of his contemporaries, but it waned as germ theory waxed. In a bid to be objective and politically neutral, scientists focused their attention on pathogens that cause disease and ignored the societal factors that make disease possible. The social and biomedical sciences were cleaved apart, separated into different disciplines, departments, and scholars. Medicine and public health treated diseases as battles between individuals and germs, while sociologists and anthropologists dealt with the wider context that Virchow had identified. This rift began to narrow in the 1980s, but it still remains wide. COVID-19 landed in the middle of it. Throughout much of 2020, the United States (and the White House, specifically) looked to drugs and vaccines for salvation while furiously debating about masks and social distancing. The latter were the only measures that controlled the pandemic for much of the year; billed as “non-pharmaceutical interventions,” they were characterized in opposition to the more highly prized biomedical panaceas. Meanwhile, social interventions such as paid sick leave and universal health care, which could have helped essential workers protect their livelihoods without risking their health, were barely considered.

To the extent that the pandemic has been a science story, it’s also been a story about the limitations of what science has become. Perverse academic incentives that reward researchers primarily for publishing papers in high-impact journals have long pushed entire fields toward sloppy, irreproducible work; during the pandemic, scientists have flooded the literature with similarly half-baked and misleading research. Pundits have urged people to “listen to the science,” as if “the science” is a tome of facts and not an amorphous, dynamic entity, born from the collective minds of thousands of individual people who argue and disagree about data that can be interpreted in a range of ways. The long-standing disregard for chronic illnesses such as dysautonomia and myalgic encephalomyelitis meant that when thousands of COVID-19 “long-haulers” kept experiencing symptoms for months, science had almost nothing to offer them. The naive desire for science to remain above politics meant that many researchers were unprepared to cope with a global crisis that was both scientific and political to its core. “There’s an ongoing conversation about whether we should do advocacy work or ‘stick to the science,’” Whitney Robinson, a social epidemiologist, told me. “We always talk about how these magic people will take our findings and implement them. We send those findings out, and knowledge has increased! But with COVID, that’s a lie!”

Virchow’s experiences with epidemics radicalized him, pushing the man who would become known as the “father of pathology” to advocate for social and political reforms. COVID-19 has done the same for many scientists. Many of the issues it brought up were miserably familiar to climate scientists, who drolly welcomed newly traumatized epidemiologists into their ranks. In the light of the pandemic, old debates about whether science (and science writing) is political now seem small and antiquated. Science is undoubtedly political, whether scientists want it to be or not, because it is an inextricably human enterprise. It belongs to society. It is interleaved with society. It is of society.

Read: How the pandemic defeated America

This is true even of areas of science that seem to be sheltered within some protected corner of intellectual space. My first book was about the microbiome, a bustling area of research that went unnoticed for centuries because it had the misfortune to arise amid the ascent of Darwinism and germ theory. With nature red in tooth and claw, and germs as the root of disease, the idea of animals benefiting from cooperative microbes was anathema. My next book will show that our understanding of animal senses has been influenced by the sociology of science—whether scientists believe one another, whether they successfully communicate their ideas, whether they publish in a prestigious English journal or an obscure foreign-language one. That understanding has also been repeatedly swayed by the trappings of our own senses. Science is often caricatured as a purely empirical and objective pursuit. But in reality, a scientist’s interpretation of the world is influenced by the data she collects, which are influenced by the experiments she designs, which are influenced by the questions she thinks to ask, which are influenced by her identity, her values, her predecessors, and her imagination.

When I began to cover COVID-19 in 2020, it became clear that the usual mode of science writing would be grossly insufficient. Much of journalism is fragmentary: Big stories are broken down into small components that can be quickly turned into content. For science writing, that means treating individual papers as a sacrosanct atomic unit and writing about them one at a time. But for an omnicrisis, this approach leads only to a messy, confusing, and ever-shifting mound of jigsaw pieces. What I tried to do instead was unite those pieces. I wrote a series of long features about big issues, attempting to synthesize vast amounts of information and give readers a steady rock upon which they could observe the torrent of information rushing past them without drowning in it. I treated the pandemic as more than a science story, interviewing sociologists, anthropologists, historians, linguists, patients, and more. And I found that the writing I gravitated toward did the same. The pandemic clarified that science is inseparable from the rest of society, and that connection works both ways. Science touches on everything; everything touches on science. The walls between beats seemed to crumble. What, I found myself asking, even counts as science writing?

Read: How the pandemic now ends

There has long been a view of science writing that imagines it’s about opening up the ivory tower and making its obscure contents accessible to the masses. But this is a strange model, laden with troubling corollaries. It implicitly assumes that science is beleaguered and unappreciated, and that unwilling audiences must be convinced of its importance and value. It equates science with journals, universities, and other grand institutions that are indeed opaque and cloistered. And treating science as a special entity that normies are finally being invited to take part in is also somewhat patronizing.

Such invitations are not anyone’s to extend. Science is so much more than a library of publications, or the opinions of doctorate holders and professors. Science writing should be equally expansive. Ultimately, What even counts as science writing? is a question we shouldn’t be able to answer. A woman’s account of her own illness. A cultural history of a color. An investigation into sunken toxic barrels. A portrait of a town with a rocket company for a neighbor. To me, these pieces and others that I selected for the 2021 edition of the Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology show that science is intricately woven into the fabric of our lives—so intricately that science writing should be difficult to categorize.

There is an obvious risk here. Of the typical journalistic beats, science is perhaps the only one that draws us out of our human trappings. Culture, politics, business, sport, food: These are all about one species. Science covers the other billions, and the entirety of the universe besides. I feel its expansive nature keenly. I have devoted most of my career to writing about microbes and lichens, hagfish and giraffes, duck penises and hippo poop. But I do so now with a renewed understanding that even as we step away from ourselves, we cannot fully escape. Our understanding of nature has been profoundly shaped by our culture, our social norms, and our collective decisions about who gets to be a scientist at all. And our relationship with nature—whether we succumb to it, whether we learn from it, whether we can save it—depends on our collective decisions too.

This article was excerpted from Ed Yong’s introduction in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021.

Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Morphing robot turns challenging terrain to its advantage

A bioinspired robot developed at EPFL can change shape to alter its own physical properties in response to its environment, resulting in a robust and efficient autonomous vehicle as well as a fresh approach to robotic locomotion.

Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

image:
The morphing Good Over All Terrains (GOAT) robot in sphere mode © CREATE EPFL
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Credit: © CREATE EPFL

From mountain goats that run up near-vertical rock faces to armadillos that roll into a protective ball, animals have evolved to adapt effortlessly to changes in their environment. In contrast, when an autonomous robot is programmed to reach a goal, each variation in its pre-determined path presents a significant physical and computational challenge.

Researchers led by Josie Hughes in the CREATE Lab in EPFL’s School of Engineering wanted to develop a robot that could traverse diverse environments as adeptly as animals by changing form on the fly. With GOAT (Good Over All Terrains) they have achieved just that – and created a new paradigm for robotic locomotion and control in the process.

Thanks to its flexible yet durable design, GOAT can spontaneously morph between a flat ‘rover’ shape and a sphere as it moves. This allows it to switch between driving, rolling, and even swimming, all while consuming less energy than a robot with limbs or appendages.

“While most robots compute the shortest path from A to B, GOAT considers the travel modality as well as the path to be taken,” Hughes explains. “For example, instead of going around an obstacle like a stream, GOAT can swim straight through. If its path is hilly, it can passively roll downhill as a sphere to save both time and energy, and then actively drive as a rover when rolling is no longer beneficial.”

The research has been published in Science Robotics.

Compliance is key

To design their robot, the CREATE team took inspiration from across the animal kingdom, including spiders, kangaroos, cockroaches, and octopuses.The team’s bioinspired approach led to a design that is highly compliant, meaning it adapts in response to interaction with its environment, rather than remaining rigid. This compliance means that GOAT can actively alter its shape to change its passive properties, which range from more flexible in its ‘rover’ configuration, to more robust as a sphere.

Built from inexpensive materials, the robot’s simple frame is made of two intersecting elastic fiberglass rods, with four motorized rimless wheels. Two winch-driven cables change the frame’s configuration, ultimately shortening like tendons to draw it tightly into a ball. The battery, onboard computer, and sensors are contained in a payload weighing up to 2 kg that is suspended in the center of the frame, where it is well protected in sphere mode – much as a hedgehog protects its underbelly.

The path of least resistance

CREATE Lab PhD student Max Polzin explains that compliance also allows GOAT to navigate with minimal sensing equipment. With only a satellite navigation system and a device for measuring the robot’s own orientation (inertial measurement unit), GOAT carries no cameras onboard: it simply does not need to know exactly what lies in its path.

“Most robots that navigate extreme terrain have lots of sensors to determine the state of each motor, but thanks to its ability to leverage its own compliance, GOAT doesn’t need complex sensing. It can leverage the environment, even with very limited knowledge of it, to find the best path: the path of least resistance,” Polzin says.

Future research avenues include improved algorithms to help exploit the unique capabilities of morphing, compliant robots, as well as scaling GOAT’s design up and down to accommodate different payloads. Looking ahead, the researchers see many potential applications for their device, from environmental monitoring to disaster response, and even extraterrestrial exploration.

“Robots like GOAT could be deployed quickly into uncharted terrain with minimal perception and planning systems, allowing them to turn environmental challenges into computational assets,” Hughes says. “By harnessing a combination of active reconfiguration and passive adaptation, the next generation of compliant robots might even surpass nature’s versatility.”