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Manta rays inspire faster swimming robots and better water filters


Efficient swimming and feeding make the creatures a model for human machines.

This involves oscillation, meaning that with each flap, the fins deform into a wave shape (kind of like a bird’s wings) before momentarily flattening out again and starting the process over. The graceful oscillations of manta fins propagate waves that move outward from the ray’s body and create vortices that spiral, pushing water backward and producing forward thrust. “The waveform shape of motions has a dramatic impact on the thrust generation, efficiency, and swimming speed,” the team said in a study recently published in Science Advances.

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