Measuring the leap of a lizard

Creatures use their tails to balance during complex maneuvers

Web edition : Thursday, January 5th, 2012

The animators of Jurassic Park were right on in their depiction of Velociraptor aeronautics: A leaping lizard uses its tail to correct ungainly maneuvers, akin to a tightrope walker with a balancing pole.?

Researchers have confirmed a 40-year-old hypothesis regarding dinosaur acrobatics by studying Agama lizards. The critters arch their tails towards their heads when leaping to prevent a nose dive, a team reports online January 4 in Nature.

The University of California, Berkeley scientists filmed lizards leaping onto rough and slippery surfaces and assessed the launchings with some clever math. The team then built a lizard-sized robot with a movable tail and, like the lizard, the robot used the same tail maneuvers to correct the angle of its body after launching so it would land safely.

Assessment of a reconstruction of a 1.5 meter-tall Velociraptor ? a smaller version than that in Jurassic Park ? suggests that it and other not-too-big therapod dinosaurs could have performed the same tail tricks, and may have been better aerialists than the Agama.

Found in: Life

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/337394/title/Measuring_the_leap_of_a_lizard

richard hamilton richard hamilton paris jackson paris jackson howard stern americas got talent china aircraft carrier barbara walters most fascinating person 2011