Elephants are the largest land mammals on Earth, and understanding them better could lead to some incredibly large breakthroughs in science. Researchers are doing a deep-dive study on elephant trunks, with the aim of improving the future of robotics.
Elephants’ trunks are both delicate and strong — they are capable of grasping a single leaf but can also carry nearly 600 pounds. And scientists argue that these multifunctional trunks — called proboscis — are incredible inspiration for the next generation of bio-inspired(仿生) robots.
“Classical robots are extremely good for performing a specific task for which they’ve been designed. If you want that robot to do something a little different, it will fail,” said Michel Milinkovitch, a professor of the physics of biology at the University of Geneva.
In new research, scientists explained how elephants can move their trunks with almost unlimited degrees of freedom, combining about 20 basic movements to carry out more complicated movements. “Elephants have sort of a toolkit of simple movements, and they can combine these simple movements to complex trajectories (轨迹),” Milinkovitch said. “They can adapt to the object you give them.” The study also found that elephants can form “pseudo-joints” with their trunks, similar to the structure of a human elbow(肘) and wrist.
“It’s also a feeling of wonder just looking at these amazing creatures,” Milinkovitch said, noting that African forest elephants and African savanna elephants are endangered species. “We also hope to increase awareness of the conservation of this very unique animal,” he said. “There are a lot of principles that we can learn from nature; it’s not just there for our happy life — it is really an incredible source of engineering principles.”
28. What is the inspiration of elephants’ trunks for bio-inspired robots?
Humans are struggling to contain two major crises: Skyrocketing global temperatures and deep-diving biodiversity. People tend to tackle each problem on its own, but in a new report, 50 scientists from around the world argue that treating each crisis alone means missing out on solutions that resolve both. Humans can’t solve one without also solving the other.
So what might these solutions look like? For instance, you turn a heavily damaged forest into a national park. As the trees grow back, they would store carbon in their tissues and provide habitat for the return of animals. Rather than planting a single species of tree to balance some factory’s carbon emissions(排放物), letting a forest come back naturally will make it more resilient. This is known as a nature-based solution, a campaign that both absorbs carbon and provides an extra ecological or economic benefit.
Preventing humans’ attack on ecosystems can also help fight climate change. Even cities can take part in the action. Urban areas turn into “heat islands”, because they absorb the sun’s energy during the day and slowly release it at night. Therefore, they are much hotter than surrounding rural areas. Planting more trees cools cities, and provides habitats for birds and shade for humans, which will be ever more critical as global temperatures rise.
The big warning is that nature-based solutions alone can’t stop climate change. First and foremost, humans have to dramatically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Besides, “governments and factories are becoming aware of the importance of maintaining biodiversity while also fighting climate change,” says Beymer-Farris, from the University of Kentucky. Planting a single species of tree to balance emissions is out, and more effective solutions are increasingly in. “I myself, as a professor who has been working in this for 20 years, I see a lot of hope, because I see a lot of change on the horizon.”
32. What do the underlined words “make it more resilient” in paragraph 2 mean?
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