Judy shows that geckos walk on water

From the New York Times today, a great write-up of Judy’s work that she started as a student project in Bob Full’s amazing class on biomechanics!

“Dr. Nirody, who will start research at Rockefeller University this coming year, and Judy Jinn, were graduate students in the lab of Robert J. Full [BACKSTORY:  Judy is in our lab but was collaborating with Bob’s lab; also Judy and Jasmine share first authorship on this – and she’ll be Dr. Jinn by May] at the University of California, Berkeley, when they decided to subject the geckos’ water running to greater scrutiny. They built a tank, acquired some house geckos and used video to document the geckos’ water running in a controlled environment so that it could be mathematically analyzed.

As they and their colleagues reported in Current Biology, geckos use both running and swimming motions.

They run on all four legs, slapping the water with their feet the way grebes and basilisks do, finishing the leg movements with paddle-like strokes that help raise most of their body above the water surface and push them forward”