How Roboticists Are Copying Nature to Make Fantastical Machines

If nature knows what it's doing, it sure does a good job hiding it. Like, why would evolution produce an elephant with a shovel for a face? For very good reasons, as it turns out. Natural selection is an astoundingly creative phenomenon, molding species to fit their environments, even if that means turning their faces into shovels. It's also created a galaxy of ways for animals to move about, from walking to crawling to flying.