How to Walk on Water and Climb up Walls

Animal Movement and the Robots of the Future

By: David Hu

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini

Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

Discovering the secrets of animal movement and what they can teach us.

Insects walk on water, snakes slither, and fish swim. Animals move with astounding grace, speed, and versatility: how do they do it, and what can we learn from them? In How to Walk on Water and Climb up Walls, David Hu takes listeners on an accessible, wondrous journey into the world of animal motion. From basement labs at MIT to the rain forests of Panama, Hu shows how animals have adapted and evolved to traverse their environments, taking advantage of physical laws with results that are startling and ingenious. In turn, the latest discoveries about animal mechanics are inspiring scientists to invent robots and devices that move with similar elegance and efficiency.

Hu follows scientists as they investigate a multitude of animal movements, from the undulations of sandfish and the way that dogs shake off water in fractions of a second to the seemingly crash-resistant characteristics of insect flight. Not limiting his exploration to individual organisms, Hu describes the ways animals enact swarm intelligence, such as when army ants cooperate and link their bodies to create bridges that span ravines. He also looks at what scientists learn from nature’s unexpected feats - such as snakes that fly, mosquitoes that survive rainstorms, and dead fish that swim upstream. As researchers better understand such issues as energy, flexibility, and water repellency in animal movement, they are applying this knowledge to the development of cutting-edge technology.

Integrating biology, engineering, physics, and robotics, How to Walk on Water and Climb up Walls demystifies the remarkable mechanics behind animal locomotion.

©2018 Princeton University Press (P)2018 Audible, Inc.

More to it than I thought

As the author states, there is so much more to the movement of animals than I first thought. Many interesting applications of mechanical engineering, 3D printing and thermodynamics used to study animal movement that can later be used to help us in return.

Plenty of Interesting Tidbits

Little known tidbits about how insects came to move the way they move. There is also info about how we can use their movement to create robots to explore different areas like diaster rescue

Defence of basic research

Brilliant explanation of how basic research underlies new discoveries and solves problems. The dead fish and shaking dog are possible solutions to propeller cavitation, etc. highly recommended

Wished I had a Science Teacher like Prof. David

Wished I had a science teacher like Prof. David, or had any such book during my College, or University days. So many curious things are happening surrounding us; some of us do not care, some of us try to understand but are crippled with knowledge gaps and scarcity of such kinds of books. David has fulfilled such gaps, by explaining things in so simplified manner, he just gives confidence that we too can discover something with very normal things at our disposal.

Very soon we will have powerful robots, but using our smartphone we can study many things surrounding us. Animals present a different world, a vast body of knowledge to be applicable for the coming technologies, and for human betterment.

I was struck by David's one sentence somewhere in the title; "As we'll see, evolution has offered animals what is good for them, but they are not the best ones". Wow, not only human beings are imperfect, but the entire animal kingdom is !

With technology taking great strides, we need such great strides in science communications.

Fun, entertaining, hilarious, and informative

I listened to this book many times because it has so many fascinating facts to think about. If kids read this book, they would be immediately fascinated by all aspects of science and math. This should be mandatory reading in high school science and college introductory courses. David Hu is a master at story telling, and he is so funny. He stimulates one to wonder about everything. I hope David Hu writes more books.