Scientists have developed a salamander-like robot that can explain the transition of the first amphibians from sea to land
robo-salamander. Photo: Federal Polytechnic Institute in Lausanne
A robot built by a French-Swiss team of researchers may explain how the first creatures to land walked. The robot resembles a salamander, and the scientists can change the way it swims, surfs or crawls using commands sent to it wirelessly from a personal computer.
The group states that the robot provides new insights into the changes in the nervous system that creatures living in the sea need to make in order to exist on land. The article describing the research was published in the journal Science in March.
By mimicking the salamander's nervous system and movements, the team hopes to encode what might have happened during evolution, says Ock Jan Eispirt, from the Federal School in Lausanne.
Fossils have been found that symbolize the transition to land
Paleoanthologists have found 360-million-year-old fossils of creatures that appear to be in the middle of the process of turning fins into arms.
Before becoming four-legged, the creatures that dominate life on land, all crustaceans lived in the sea. How exactly they got to land is still unclear, but a recently published study found evidence that the transition did not require a radical change in brain power.
Ijspeert and his colleagues showed that even a simple change in the nervous system in a primitive eel-like fish can, with small adjustments, control the walking movements of a salamander-like creature. They built a computer system simulating the eel's brain, and a robot simulating its shape, and it turned out there was no difference in complexity.
The computer sends signals through the robot's mechanical spine to the arms and allows the robot to switch its movements between swimming and walking. They tested the robot on the shore of Lake Geneva.
The scientists chose the salamander as the animal to inspire their mechanical animal because this amphibian is similar to the first vertebrate that lived on land. When they swim, they do so in a similar way to fish - their body moves in a wavy manner, and their arms fold back. When the salamander is on land, it changes its way of locomotion to locomotion in slow steps, where the opposite limbs move together while the body twists in the shape of the letter S.
The brain is responsible for managing speed and direction, says Ijespirit.
"A headless chicken moving for a while even without a brain is a good example of the regulation of movement by the spine.
9 תגובות
We really are like monkeys.
I am definitely beginning to suspect that they are more human than us.
And evolution, seemingly unnecessary, has corrupted us.
For the ultra-Orthodox, the "devout", the desire for attribution, in their language, indeed, is similar to "yikes".. already induces nausea.
No wonder there are already opponents, enlightened ones, who are losing their faith, as an anti-thesis, to the same dark fixation... we don't have to go far, within our people we sit, and we are all for all the models and formations,
We live next door... I hope, that maybe you also repair, after all.
Well, I caught a ride on someone.
Apparently, it's not exactly Halloween today, according to them...and ours.
He who is so afraid of the resemblance to his "relatives" (who are very, very distant), that he
Entered this site in order to try and mock the only scientific approach that describes the
The evolution of the species, maybe he should check what really scares him; It is possible
Because this is the primal fear in ultra-Orthodox society, which abhors "exceptions" and is afraid
Lest the lineage would not seem perfect if stories about the mentally retarded
or mental illness (for example) in the family will go out on the street.
An ancient monkey in a privileged line of rabbis, does seem out of place, but no
This is how things are presented in science - and this is not how they should be treated.
to Isaac
It is not wise to copy and paste to the websites of rabbis. Religious people are also allowed to think for themselves.
In the end, the question of whether your grandfather was a monkey does not depend on your opinion about monkeys but on objective circumstances, and therefore an attempt to mock only indicates ignorance and not even blind faith.
All the evidence shows that man and the great apes diverged from common earlier origins. For example, the fossil of the female Lucy is a creature from the time before the common father between us and chimpanzees.
Beyond you, if we are such a chosen people, why are we so few and suffer so much that the existence of seven million of us prevents a nation 10 times larger than us from trying to exterminate us with nuclear weapons.
To my father Blizovsky, if it pleases you to think that you are a byproduct of monkeys, then it will be your fault. I believe that there is a God and that he created all creatures by the way. I once heard a story about a non-Jewish educator who believed in evolution and his students despised him and it was not possible to continue the lesson. Exemplary discipline was imposed, so he asked the Jewish educator how he manages to get the children to obey him. The Jewish educator answered him, everyone who is older is closer to the monkeys, so the question arises, who should respect whom? Who is more ape than you, or should the monkeys respect the children, because they are More developed in terms of evolution, which is not the case with us Jews. Anyone who is older, the closer they are to the status of Mount Sinai where God chose us as the chosen people.
To my father Blizovsky
Be careful when copying from other languages. As we have already written several times, although most European languages use the same letters, each language uses them a little differently. We must not assume that if we know the English method, we can also understand other methods. If the name Ijspeert is a Dutch name (on the face of it, it looks like a Dutch name), the transliteration should be Ispirt, A. in Petah or Tsira, P. in Tsira / Hirik. As far as I know, j is c only in English, not in any other European language.
I will be happy to help in the future
Best regards
We are not in the 19th century, and we are not satisfied only with physical similarity (because there can be convergence) but wherever you can see the equality and the difference in DNA and you can know exactly when two species split.
Another proof of evolution - the adaptation of bacteria to antibiotics. And there are many more proofs, that I don't need to be caught in translation to look for holes in evolution. There simply isn't.
To my father.
Where did you get that the only ones who doubt the theory of evolution are those who believe in the theory of creation? (Although this is a possibility...).
Disbelief in one theory does not necessarily mean blind belief in another theory. There can be endless possibilities, and it is not my job to bring the right one, but only to find the flaws in the one claiming the crown.
Just an example:
Creatures from a parallel location that has existed for several hundreds of billions of years, that arrive on Earth in the wake of every catastrophe and plant living creatures for research purposes or just out of curiosity. How were the creatures from the parallel universe created? It is none of our business and it is impossible to understand it at all because the laws of physics in the parallel universe are different.
Now go prove it wrong. And also please explain why the evidence for the theory of evolution is stronger than the theory of the parallel universe that I just invented?
Evolution is precarious only for those who believe in the theory of creation. It is not clear why articles that describe point by point are supposed to disturb something, did they not disturb the readers of the original articles? Only the Israelis are bothered by it, perhaps because the education they receive in school expresses an aversion to evolution, and those who do not want to be convinced analyze every word to find proof of their disbelief. Unlike religion, word games should not make a scientist change his decision, the only thing that matters are the facts and their popular description should not change them. They prove evolution well.
phenomenon:
Before I started reading the articles on the site, it never occurred to me to doubt the "theory of evolution".
But now, following each article, the theory seems a little shakier to me. And this article demonstrates it well.