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Volume 481 Issue 7380, 12 January 2012

In 1969—a few years after unearthing the first Velociraptor fossil—John Ostrom speculated that theropod dinosaurs used their tails as dynamic stabilizers during active or irregular movements. A study combining computer modelling, video observation of leaping agama lizards (Agama agama) and the construction of a robot with a lizard-like tail provides support for Ostrom’s hypothesis. The results (see videos in Supplementary Information) show that, using sensory feedback, active tails can stabilize body attitude mid-air by transferring angular momentum from body to tail. The inertia of swinging appendages has also been invoked as a stabilizing factor in primates and other animals, so these findings are relevant to our understanding of appendage evolution in general. They may also provide biological inspiration for the design of highly manoeuvrable search-and-rescue robots using tails. Cover: A. agama leaping to a vertical surface from a low-friction vault.

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