Octopi are pro swimmers, thanks (at least in part) to that octet of arms they’ve got going on. They’ve adopted a particular swimming gait called sculling, which works great for them, but until they start publishing scientific papers, we’re missing out on all of their gait testing data. Roboticists have had to start from scratch, and along the way, they’ve experimented with some swimming gaits that we’ve never seen a real octopus try and pull off.
via IEEE Spectrum
May 21, 2013