Manta Rays and Biomimetics
You probably know that there are some mighty strange things living in the oceans, and we have not even explored all of them yet. An odd flat fish thing that is somewhat familiar is the manta ray. Rays are related to sharks, but without the bad attitude. Sharks, dolphins, and so on move from side to side, but mantas have that interesting motion that (to me) looks a bit like it's flying underwater. One endangered species has the unfortunate moniker of " devil fish " or "giant devil ray" because some folks thought it looked creepy. Scientists wanted to study the motion of mantas for biomimetics uses. The sting ray was not mentioned in the report that I saw. Credit: flikr / jon hanson ( CC BY-SA 2.0 ) If you recollect that biomimetics is the way scientists study organisms in nature so they can imitate them for our use, then you recollect rightly. Someone got the notion that mantas have a way of moving that, if successfully imitated (although without credit to