Squirrels Inspire Leaping Strategy for Salto Robot

When you see a squirrel jump to a branch, you might think (and I myself thought, up until just now) that they’re doing what birds and primates would do to stick the landing: just grabbing the branch and hanging on. But it turns out that squirrels, being squirrels, don’t actually have prehensile hands or feet, meaning that they can’t grasp things with any significant amount of strength. Instead, they manage to land on branches using a “palmar” grasp, which isn’