Crustaceans Help Build NASA's Exploration Abilities

Crayfish are good explorers, according to Professor David Macmillan of the University of Melbourne, Australia. They use their antennae to orient themselves. They use chemosensory receptors placed all over their bodies to detect chemicals in the water that indicate food, mates and predators.

According to Macmillan, crayfish can perform sophisticated analyses on a space before they even enter it; he has worked with NASA scientists developing robots to give them pointers on how crayfish use their tails.

They (crayfish) can easily distinguish between different surfaces, like bubblewrap versus sandpaper. Their great sense of touch sets yet another example for NASA biomimetic explorer robots, which have already benefited from Macmillan's previous studies of crayfish tails.

SOURCE: TechNovelgy

I found this very interesting and quite amazing.
I hope this gets more R&D.


Comments, Opinions?

interesting. just crazy enough to work maybe.
sci fi writer Stephen Baxter wrote about using squid in space exploration. (fiction!) www.vondanmcintyre.com... .