Hairy legs make you swim better – if you're a shrimp

Having hairy legs may make shrimp better swimmers. "Can hair help you swim better? Swimmers will say no, but shrimp would say yes," said Sara Oliveira Santos from Brown University in Rhode Island at a fluid dynamics conference this week. She and her colleagues studied how shrimp and shrimp-inspired robots swim to determine whether it is advantageous for them to be hairy. Shrimp use a special swimming technique called metachronal swimming to easily move through water.