Climate change is warming ocean waters, making the environment more acidic thanks to the absorption of carbon monoxide from the atmosphere. This endangers various marine species, and monitoring those changes is vitally important. But it can be challenging to reach the deepest waters without the aid of very expensive equipment. Moon jellyfish can swim to those depths, however, making them a potential ally in the quest to study the deep ocean.
That’s why researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU Boulder) have built “cyborg” jellyfish equipped with tiny microelectronics devices, with the aim of gathering critical data on temperature, acidity, and other relevant properties. To further improve their hybrid creations, the team has been studying the biomechanics of how jellyfish swim. Their research also involves analyzing water flow patterns generated by swimming jellies using suspended starchy biodegradable particles, described in the group’s most recent paper published in the journal Physical Review Fluids.
Creating biohybrid creatures is a well-established field. For instance, as we previously reported, scientists have been intrigued by the potential of cyborg insects since the 1990s, when researchers began implanting tiny electrodes into cockroach antennae and shocking them to direct their movements. The idea was to use them as hybrid robots for search-and-rescue applications.
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