A team of scientists from Cambridge has developed a robot that can help unravel the mystery of how early vertebrates evolved the ability to walk on land hundreds of millions of years ago.<\/p>\n
The fish-like robot can also help demystify how some species of fish can walk on land today.\u00a0The team relied on computer models, the observations of fish found in nature, and their own creation to come up with a basic theory.<\/p>\n
The team has found that a wide range of unrelated fish species have independently evolved the same basic walking gait, which essentially mimics a swimming motion on land, according to a statement.<\/p>\n
Solving an evolutionary question with modern tech<\/p>\n
The simple walking pattern adopted by fish, which the Cambridge researchers call an \u2018undulating tripod gait\u2019, can appear to be quite clumsy and involves too much flopping. But the team says it is one of life\u2019s most ancient solutions to a problem: how to escape predators or move from one habitat to another, without specialized limbs.<\/p>\n
The method is actually quite simple: fish can propel themselves forward with their tails while using their front fins and head for support. This feat has been observed in a wide variety of species \u2013 ranging from the African lungfish to armored catfish.<\/p>\n
The ability to move around in an extra mode can be seen as an evolutionary benefit, allowing them to survive and expand their territory.<\/p>\n
The team says that there have been efforts in the past to study walking fish, but they have been focused on a single species. They add that this is the first time that \u201cunifying locomotive principles across multiple species have been identified.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019ve got the ability to walk on land and your predator doesn\u2019t, then you can escape, and hopefully the predator moves on,\u201d said lead author Dr Michael Ishida, from Cambridge\u2019s Department of Engineering. \u201cYou\u2019ve also got the ability to move from one shallow-water environment to another, like tide pools, for example.\u201d<\/p>\n
This example of convergent evolution \u2013 where multiple species evolve similar abilities independently \u2013 can also help them understand how the first vertebrates made the transition from living in water to surviving on land.<\/p>\n
The scientists first created a computer model based on the movement of grey bichir \u2013 which is native to Africa \u2013 and other walking fish species. The model revealed similar modes of locomotion across several species.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe kept seeing this recurring kind of walking motion, although it\u2019s very primitive,\u201d said Ishida, an engineer in Professor Fumiya Iida\u2019s lab at Cambridge. \u201cA number of different fish, spread out across the evolutionary tree and not closely related to each other, all do it. It\u2019s such a simple movement and can recur from a very basic starting point.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ishida added that a swimming fish uses its body to propel itself through the water, \u201cso if you take that, put it on land, give it some ability to shuffle its front fins, that\u2019s exactly what it\u2019s doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robot fish and computer modeling<\/p>\n
The team then designed a<\/a> physical robot fish to test<\/a> their results and found that the most efficient movement closely matched the bichir\u2019s movements and the results from the computer model.<\/p>\n \u201cWe tried all kinds of different gaits on the robot, and every other gait we tried was slower,\u201d said Ishida. \u201cAny 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.\u201d<\/p>\n The team plans to test the model on fossil fish such as\u00a0Tiktaalik, an important fossil link in the transition from water to land. A combination of computer modeling and robotics could help determine how the ancient species first walked on land.<\/p>\n The findings have been reported in the journal Nature Communications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A team of scientists from Cambridge has developed a robot that can help unravel the mystery of how…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[12436,85,5939,206713,61,60,2367,82,122274],"class_list":["post-479461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-cambridge","tag-evolution","tag-fish","tag-fish-like-robot","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-robot","tag-science","tag-vertebrate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}