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New high-speed videos show squirrels performing daring parkour-type stunts, all in pursuit of peanuts.
In a new study, published Thursday August 5 in the journal Science, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley tested the fox’s agility squirrels (black squirrel) on the university campus. Their goal was to learn how squirrels maneuver through the canopy of trees, leaping between branches of different sizes while consistently sticking to the landing.
To recruit their bush-tailed study subjects, the research team ventured into the campus eucalyptus grove armed with peanuts and a squirrel-sized device with animal accessories. to climb. The device could be fitted with different rods, intended to simulate tree branches, from which squirrels could jump. At the other end of the aircraft was a landing perch with a mouthwatering cup of peanuts stuck to one end. Squirrels quickly learned to jump from the rod to the landing perch in order to reach the peanuts, and the researchers adjusted the distance between the rod and the perch, to challenge the rodents.
Related: 10 amazing things you didn’t know about animals
Faced with rods of varying curvature and spaces of varying widths, the squirrels quickly adapted their jumping strategy, the team found. “When they cross a gap, they decide where to take off based on a trade-off between the flexibility of the branch and the size of the gap they need to cross,” said lead author Nathaniel Hunt, who was a PhD student at Berkeley during the study, in a declaration. (Hunt is now an assistant professor of biomechanics at the University of Nebraska, Omaha.)
For example, when launching from a relatively stiff rod, squirrels started their jump closer to the end of the rod, to minimize their jumping distance from the peanuts. But when launching from a curved rod that curved under their weight, the squirrels began their jump earlier, presumably to take off from the strongest point of the “branch” and reduce the bending motion.
While jumping over a large space, the squirrels occasionally passed or exceeded their jumps, but none ever fell, the authors noted in their report. “If they’re missing, they don’t reach their center of mass directly on the landing perch; they’re amazing to be able to hang on to,” Hunt said in the statement. “They’ll swing under; they’ll swing over. They just don’t fall.”
But faced with a truly huge gap – measuring about three to five squirrels in length – rodents took an “unexpected” approach, the authors wrote. The squirrels used the back of the climbing device – a flat, vertical wall – to perform an impressive parkour move, in which they ricocheted off the wall and quickly reoriented their bodies to land directly on the perch peanut.
Not only does the new study highlight the remarkable athleticism of squirrels, but one day the data could be used to design agile robots, the statement said. Several authors of the article belong to a consortium funded by the US Army Research Office, and their collective goal is to create the world’s first robot with squirrel-like capabilities. Such a robot would be able to judge in a fraction of a second to move with agility in its environment, just like a squirrel does when it jumps on the branches of a tree.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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