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Cockroaches can squish their bodies to less than half their usual standing height and still manage to run at high speeds. Professor Robert Full from Berkeley University has used the critters’ compressible bodies as inspiration for a soft-bodied robot that could help first responders in search and rescue missions.

Photo: The compressible robot, CRAM, with an American cockroach © Tom Libby, Kaushik Jayaram and Pauline Jennings. Courtesy of PolyPEDAL Lab UC Berkeley.