"The Passion of the Cockroach"

The last talk of the workshop was a neuroscience/biomechics talk by Phil Holmes of Princeton University (one of the bigshots, by the way). The example of the day concerned cockroach locomotion, which has been studied extensively in the Berkeley laboratory of Bob Full.

I have seen Full speak oin various aspects of this topic a couple times -- he is a wonderful speaker! -- and there are a number of really awesome videos associated with this project.

I tried to find a video online relevant to this blog entry, but I could only find the old ones (and none of the really good old ones). Some of you might have heard me carry on about this series of projects before---I know I have mentioned the great videos of how roaches run over obstacles really well, can recover from perturbations like a small rocket being fired from a launcher on their back, etc.

OK, so whence my title? Well, one of the motivational videos for this talk showed a cockroach running along a treadmill with a thing on its back that looks like a cross. And the speaker casually, dryly referred to this video as "The Passion of the Cockroach." I approve!