The tail of a seahorse can be compressed to about half its
size before permanent damage occurs, engineers at the University of California,
San Diego, have found. The tail’s exceptional flexibility is due to its
structure, made up of bony, armored plates, which slide past each other.
Researchers are hoping to use a similar structure to create a flexible robotic
arm equipped with muscles made out of polymer, which could be used in medical
devices, underwater exploration and unmanned bomb detection and detonation. UC
San Diego engineers, led by materials science professors Joanna McKittrick and
Marc Meyers, detailed their findings in the March 2013 issue of the journal
Acta Biomaterialia.