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CHARMS & CHIPS It’s a culture clash for the ages: mystic snake charmers versus high-tech bureaucrats. Last year 43 snakes – cobra, python, rat snake, boa – owned by 10 Delhi charmers were implanted with ID microchips. Officials hope the procedure will, among other things, help them keep tabs on who owns which snakes. Noncompliant charmers, who call the measure unfair, could be jailed. Yet even chipped snakes are illegal based on a 1972 law, says Kartick Styanarayan of Wildlife SOS. He urges reform, not regulastion: Instead of defanging and mistreating snakes, charmers could use their skills for conservation work. Herpetologist Romulus Whitaker agrees, but wonders about widespread change. Snake charming has largely left urban India, he says, though in superstition-steeped rural areas, “It’s not going away for the next 100 years.” |
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ROLLING Robo-Worm Stop, drop and roll. Firefighters teach this trick to kids, but for some species of caterpillars it’s a defense reflex. Confronted by a predator, the larvae spring into the air, assume a spiral shape and hit the ground at top speed to wheel away from danger. The motion us thought to be one of the fastest wheeling behaviors in nature. Hoping the technique will enable next-generation robots to go places that conventional crawling ones can’t, researchers at Tufts University have built a soft-bodied robot that replicates the spiraling actions of larval Pleuroptya ruralis, a species from the U.K. Made of silicon rubber, the robot’s four-inch-long body is undergirded by metal coils that contract into a circle when electrified, propelling the contraption forward at nearly 8 inches a second. As in nature the ballistic rolling motion can send the body unpredictable directions. But, says led researcher Huai-Ti Lin, the robot’s ability to crawl or roll, depending on terrain, could one day have practical applications in environmental monitoring, building inspection or even disaster search and rescue. |
