Pré-Publication, Document De Travail Année : 2025

Turning without Fins: How Snakes Achieve High Maneuverability While Swimming

Résumé

The agile turning maneuvers of anguilliform swimmers remain one of the least studied aspects of aquatic locomotion, despite being crucial for survival in underwater environments. Turning is a difficult engineering problem because to change direction animals must minimize their moment of inertia while maximizing torque -two mathematical opposites. Anguilliform swimmers such as snakes are highly maneuverable and accomplish this goal without the aid of limbs or pectoral fins. In this study we explore how snakes manipulate their body position to change swimming direction by analyzing five turns by five individuals (four Natrix maura and one Nerodia rhombifer). We show that snakes curl their body inwards to shift their center of mass and reduce their moment of inertia when turning. We report a volumetric wake measurement for one turn which, together with the kinematics, allows us to quantify the timing between its change in moment of inertia and vortex shedding. Our results show that the snake only sheds vortices after it has minimized its moment of inertia. These results help explain how elongated anguilliform swimmers like snakes change swimming direction. They widen our understanding of how animals use transient maneuvers to navigate aquatic environments, with implications for both natural swimmers and underwater robots.
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Dates et versions

hal-04876557 , version 1 (09-01-2025)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04876557 , version 1

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Elizabeth Gregorio, Ramiro Godoy-Diana, Anthony Herrel. Turning without Fins: How Snakes Achieve High Maneuverability While Swimming. 2025. ⟨hal-04876557⟩
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