Biomechanics Downunder

Between 2010 and 2012 I worked at the Rowland institute at Harvard university. Most of my time was spent researching the muscular dynamics of frog muscle, by building robotic frogs, but every now and then we liked to goof off scientifically. That chance came the one day when the head of my workgroup, Chris Richards, brought in a mexican jumping bean. Being from Australia, I had not seen one of these before, and that is sad. Cause they are friken awesome! The bean itself is the seed of a shrub, the genus Sebastiania . Inside this bean is growing the larve of a little brown moth ( Cydia deshaisiana ). The moth makes a hollow inside the bean, as it eats the bean from within. But what makes it amazing is that it is able to thermoregulate by moving the bean from hotter places (such as in the sun) to cooler shadier places. It does this by 'jumping' - hence the name. The actual mechanism of how this tiny moth can get the whole bean to jump is unknown, and would probably require so

Can the water dragon (Intellagama  lesueurii) run on water?  I have long been impressed with the ability of the South American Basilisk lizard to run on water. There are plenty of videos of it on youtube, for example a short one here.  Its pretty amazing. Looking at this video alone shows as two important aspects of its locomotion, 1) it is able to lift the whole body out of the water, and 2) it is able to do so for quite long stretches (around 10-15m). This ability has been documented quite well by a series of papers by the group at Harvard University, particularly  Tonia Hsieh .  They have done some great work, including describing how smaller lizards are better able to support body weight than larger  lizards  , modelling 3D  forces  and recording 3D kinematics of the lizards  stride . Below is a gif showing some of the detailed kinematics of the lizard stride which i stole from George Lauders lab webpage.  (NOTE: just click on the gifs if they are not running)