For humans, running across an open field is usually a faster way to cross it than crawling through an underground tunnel. But things are different for tiny worms. They squeeze through a confined space much faster than they wriggle across a wide open one, researchers report July 28 in Physical Review Letters . The findings could help engineers design better wormlike robots that could one day crawl through rubble after an earthquake or even move through tubes inside our bodies.
In their experiments, the researchers used California blackworms ( Lumbriculus variegatus ), which are slender, flexible, aquatic creatures that are about 0.05…
Read the full article at SCIENCENEWS.ORG
