Have you ever been walking through the forest and thought to yourself, "Damn, its loud here...it's really, really hard to hear anything anybody else is saying"? Well, maybe that's what prompted Terry J. Ord and Judy A. Stamps, respectively from Harvard and UC Davis to investigate lizard exercise routines.

The exploration of Mars and its surface is a fascinating quest, as it could unveil the signs of past or present extra-terrestrial life. In addition to potentially unveiling forms of ancient microbial life, these explorations could lead to the discovery of resources that exist outside of Earth, potentially paving the way for future human missions to Mars. The next question was how to make sense of the diversity of wave patterns. According to Chong, while there are endless ways to think about the waves and what they mean, the information is so complex that it is nearly impossible for humans to understand without using laborious and time-consuming equations. The biomimetic robot created by Chen and his colleagues is comprised of a flexible spine-like structure and four legs. To replicate the "creeping" motion typical of lizards, every leg features two hinges and a gear that elicits a swinging movement. Using geometric mechanics, Chong produced diagrams that visualized the body-limb coordination data, replacing complicated calculations with much simpler diagrammatic analysis. They were able to both see and show the advantage of snakelike waves in short-limbed elongate lizard locomotion and predict that the advantage arises as the primary thrust generation shifts from the limbs to the body. The team then built a robot model to investigate the advantages of lizardlike and snakelike body movements in the intermediate lizard species. Known as a robophysical model, the robot functions as a physicist’s model of a living system. With the robot, they can test the predictions of their theoretical model while also gaining insights into the intermediate lizard’s biology and locomotion.Simply named X-4, the university's climbing robot has allowed a team of researchers to test and replicate how a lizard moves in the hope that their findings will inspire next-generation robotics design for disaster relief, remote surveillance and possibly even space exploration. Dr. Clemente said that while the team had studied moving lizards for a long time, the robot allowed them to isolate and control the movements repeatedly to learn which way worked best. Over time, as these differences between the two different populations become larger and there is less and less mating between the populations, they will become ‘reproductively isolated’ (i.e. not mating with each other at all) and thus become two new species. Each of the hip joints connecting the spine structure with the robot's legs is made of two servos and a four-linkage mechanism that allows the robot to lift without losing its balance. The robot's "feet" have four flexible "toes," consisting of two hinges and a claw. Instead, Chong used a mathematical technique developed by particle physicists and control theorists in the last decades. While the theory, now referred to in the locomotion field as geometric mechanics, was initially introduced to study idealized locomotion — to understand how three connected points might swim in water — Chong adapted the theory to include the concept of legs.

If you do have to pay Customs Duty though, the amount payable is usually calculated based on the value of the goods and the type of goods being imported. AND IF I DON'T PAY THE CUSTOMS DUTY? The researchers’ findings enabled them to conclude that evolution was not just acting to lengthen bodies or shorten limbs, but both — and in a highly coordinated and functional way. Ord TJ, & Stamps JA (2008). Alert signals enhance animal communication in "noisy" environments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105 (48), 18830-5. PMID: 19033197You might be wondering why the researchers didn’t test their male robot lizards on real female lizards rather than male ones. Well, in these species the females don’t engage much in active choice of males. Instead, mating is determined more through male-male competition. Snakes and lizards have distinct body movement patterns. Lizards bend from side to side as they retract their legs to walk or run. Snakes, on the other hand, slither and undulate, like a wave that travels down the body. However, there are species of lizards that have long, snakelike bodies, and limbs so tiny even scientists have wondered about their purpose. Understanding how these hybrid-looking lizards move could provide insight into why an evolutionary transition from lizardlike to snakelike motion occurred. In a scientific paper published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the team states that lizards have optimized their movement across difficult terrain over many years of evolution. The researchers found that, when more body weight was distributed on the belly rather than the limbs, snakelike body movement had the clear advantage in getting lizards where they need to be — even for those lizards with the strongest legs.