File:Secrets of Slithering Snakes - Science Nation

Slithering snakes teach scientists about movement and design. Snakes and math - much of the population is afraid of one, or both. But David Hu, mathematician and mechanical engineer, combines those two sometimes scary things to unlock the secrets of how animals move.

Snakes certainly make it look easy when they slither forward, leaving perfect S-curve tracks behind them, but scientists have long been puzzled by the mechanics of their locomotion. Now, after a series of experiments and some computer modeling, David Hu has cracked the case. With funding from the National Science Foundation, he is using math to determine how snakes slither and it turns out they move in a very different way than scientists have long thought.

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