This awesome video shows how scientists are using animals as the basis for robot designs. As it is explained in the videos, this helps both scientists and biologists as they learn more about what makes these animals move and how they work.

Perhaps the most bizare item in the video is the robot cockroach that even smells like a cockroach. Because of that ability, it is kind of like a cockroach “pied piper” that can lead cockroaches into area that they normally wouldn’t want to go to. Another example of this is a “rescue rat” robot that even uses its whiskers to find its way around.

In this way the rat can go through rubble and other hard-to-access areas and locate people in need of rescue.