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The original article [1] does include a video of cockroaches running into the wall without even trying to avoid it, which is somewhat funny. [1] http://rsif.ro
by Maken 9y ago
The original article [1] does include a video of cockroaches running into the wall without even trying to avoid it, which is somewhat funny.
[1] http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/15/139/20170664.figures-only http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/15/139/201706...
- taneq 9y agoAh, thanks for that! The link to the paper in TFA came up as a 403 when I looked yesterday. This is a much more interesting video. It looks like (1) the cockroaches head/eyes are robust enough to just take the hit, which is interesting - I always wondered how robust insect eyes were compared with mammalian eyes which are obviously very delicate, and (2) the kinematics of the head/thorax flick the thorax upwards on impact. There's a lot of this kind of 'physical intelligence' built into animals' bodies, and it's a fascinating field of study - witness the recent finding that flamingos on one leg are statically stable: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/flamingos-one-leg/527781/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/flamingo...