South American electric knifefish are a leading model system within neurobiology. Recent efforts have focused on understanding how they move, and how that relates to how their brain controls movement. Knifefish swim by means of an undulatory fin that runs most of the length of their body, affixed to the belly. Using this fin enables the fish to stay relatively straightforward, making them different from sharks in this regard. The results of this experiment show that there is an optimal operational region in the fin's kinematic parameter space, when the fin is used in conjunction with a robot.

This is quite a lengthy article, but if you like dense math and physics, then this is the article for you. Usually, when one thinks about bees, you think of CCD, or bees' dance. This time, scientists are interested in their vision. Using an interesting mix of mirrors and a video camera, we are actually able to somewhat recreate what a bee sees. Obviously, it's not perfect, but it's pretty close.  The central aim was to build a light-weight system that can be used as an intuitive tool for assessing the visual world from the bees' perspective by reconstructing their visual input. This system may also serve as an insect-inspired system for mobile robots, especially for small flying vehicles.

An article about a new ventilation system based on the nasal passage of a bipedal kangaroo rat.