Natural flower wakes present aerodynamic challenges to pollinators

Plants and their pollinators must interact with changing airflow while simultaneously interacting as individual organisms. For flying pollinators, this includes flight through gusts and performing complex aerial maneuvers. Recent studies have begun to explore how these animals alter behavior in response to unsteady air, but we do not know if these conditions represent the local […]

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Centralization of Locomotor Control in Roaches & Robots

Animals such as cockroaches must coordinate the movements of multiple legs, which are coupled components of a complex hybrid-dynamical system, in order to stably run. Coordination could be achieved through a decentralized control architecture, where a motor command for a particular muscle is only informative of the variation of the local states of the limb, […]

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Moths slow their brains to track flowers in low light

Hawkmoths, like Manduca sexta, hover and track moving flowers during natural foraging in  low light environments. Neural recordings from the visual part of the moth’s brain have suggested that as light levels drop, the moth changes its sensitivity to light by integrating light for a longer period of time. Such a strategy raises the possibility […]

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Bio-inspiration from how cockroaches navigate by touch

Animals must sense their environment in order to navigate. American cockroaches (Periplaneta americana L.) in the natural world often face navigation challenges in cluttered, low-light environments. To supplement their vision, they use their antenna as tactile probes. They can track surfaces with their long antennae by letting the antenna bend against the surface and rapidly […]

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