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A team of researchers has beaten its own record for the fastest swimming soft robot, drawing inspiration from manta rays to improve their ability to control the robot's movement in the water.

"We want to expand the design space of traditional cross-flow filtration with new knowledge from the manta ray," says lead author and MIT postdoc Xinyu Mao PhD '24.

Coral reefs that some marine biologists call the Amazon of the ocean lie just offshore, home to giant clams, nurturing small fish, which in turn are prey for manta rays.

So far, erythrism has been identified in dozens of species, including reef manta rays, leopards, and European polecats.

There, just up the hill from a vital coral reef and an important ecosystem for manta rays, residents worry that dumping dangerous waste into the area could create a fresh disaster.