February’s sharpest science shots, selected by Nature’s photo team.
Super sack
Faking it
Lake light
In orbit around a distant sun
World Press Photo 2017
Dancing octopus
Between Blossoms
Running fast, going nowhere
Animals on treadmills have a long and distinguished history in science. Hansjürgen Dahmen, Matthias Wittlinger and their colleagues tweaked an existing design that uses a spherical ball suspended in a jet of air to track the path and walking behaviour of an animal atop the globe. In a paper published last week3, the team describes using the treadmill to analyse the behaviour of Cataglyphis desert ants.
Fashion world abuzz
References
Han, J., Conway Morris, S., Ou, Q., Shu, D. & Huang, H. Nature 542, 228–231 (2017).
Rahman, I. A. Nature 542, 170–171 (2017).
Dahmen, H., Wahl, V. L., Pfeffer, S. E., Mallot, H. A. & Wittlinger, M. J. Exp. Biol. 220, 634–644 (2017).
Electronic supplementary material
Desert ant on spherical treadmill
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Cressey, D. Fake stars, panda suits and ants on treadmills. Nature (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2017.21541
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2017.21541