50 Things That Made the Modern Economy · BBC World Service

Introducing: Season 2 of 30 Animals That Made Us Smarter

July 22, 2021·18 min·1 clip

Patrick Ayi reveals how mantis shrimp punches, lobster eyes, and ant jaws inspire revolutionary robots and telescopes.

The episode is introduced as the first instalment of season two of the BBC World Service podcast 30 Animals That Made Us Smarter, which was crossposted to the 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy feed. Host Patrick Ayi opens by placing the listener in the perspective of a newborn elephant for whom the trunk is an uncoordinated obstacle, explaining that elephant brains are born at half their adult weight and require time to develop neural pathways needed for trunk control. Ayi describes a visit to the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, an orphanage in Nairobi that rescues, rehabilitates and reintegrates orphaned elephants into new family herds, where keepers sleep overnight in stables with baby calves. At a morning feeding session with a four-litre bottle of milk, he observes a line of twenty calves arriving in single file and describes the contrast between confident two-year-olds who take bottles directly with their trunks and the smallest orphans for whom the trunk moves awkwardly and without apparent intent. In the wild, elephant calves take around ten years to reach full competence and at least one year just to master trunk use. The episode then presents a detailed factual breakdown of trunk capabilities: 40,000 muscles, enough strength to push down trees and lift more than 100 kilograms, sensitivity sufficient to pick up a single blade of grass, two nostrils connected to one of the most powerful olfactory systems in the animal kingdom, the ability to smell water from a distance, trunk-as-snorkel capability in deep water, sensitivity to ground vibrations from distant herds and thunderstorms, and 12-litre water-carrying capacity. A seven-year-old listener named Pranav from India is credited with suggesting the elephant trunk story for season two. The engineering application begins with the observation by Festo's Bionic Learning Network that conventional industrial robots — the balletic but dangerous machines used in car assembly — cannot safely work alongside humans because of their rigid metal surfaces and high speeds. In 2010, the team set out to build a robotic arm that would be safe near people, suitable for medical surgery environments, and as strong and flexible as an elephant's trunk. Using 3D printing rather than solid metal, the bionic handling assistant was built with hollow internal chambers along its length. A compressed-air control unit at the base inflates and deflates these chambers like tiny balloons to move the arm in any direction with considerable force while remaining lightweight. Three soft, air-filled fingers at the tip replicate the grasping precision of an elephant's trunk tip, able to handle objects as fragile as eggs or as thin as blades of grass. The episode notes that since the bionic handling assistant's introduction in 2010, the field of soft robotics has expanded rapidly, with hundreds of models now in development, enabling robots to work in contexts previously inaccessible to hard machines.

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