Dominique Adriaens

My new book is out!
📖 Exploring the Evolution of Our Ancestors: On the Human Track 🌍
It shows how diet, brains, locomotion & skin shaped our bodies through evolution—written for both students & curious readers.
👉 Routledge, Amazon, Indigo, Barnes & Noble, ...

@crcpressphysics.bsky.social

Danial Forouhar (from @dadriaens.bsky.social lab) had amazing 3D images of the muscluoskeletal system of seahorse tails, which opened lots of exciting questions about how these body muscles actuate tail prehension.

Soon my book on human evolution will be available in English, published by CRC Press. Will keep you posted on the release date. With special thanks to Charles R. Crumly for making this possible.

Exploring the evolutionary adaptations of the unique seahorse tail’s muscle architecture through in silico modelling and robotic prototyping | Journal of The Royal Society Interface Seahorses possess a unique tail muscle architecture that enables efficient grasping and anchoring onto objects. This prehensile ability is crucial for their survival, as it allows them to resist currents, cling to mates during reproduction and remain ...

Fruitful collaboration on #biomimetics, about robotic prehensile systems inspired by #seahorse tails, showing how robotics research can allow to test hypotheses on adaptive evolution in biology.
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

A short-snouted seahorse on knotted wrack (algae). The seahorse is brown and it's holding onto the wrack by its tail. Photo by Hans Hillewaert.

The rendering of the scanned seahorse tail, showing the armored plates surrounding the vertebrae, with four interlocking plate elements constituting a section of the tail shown in different colours. Below, some theoretical models of the tail for simulation purposes.

#CTpost #3 🩻🐎🐟
The tail of a seahorse has a square section ⏹️, it's prehensile and covered in armored plates. If you #µCT scan it (rendering in right image), you'll see the plates interlock around the vertebrae. But why a square? (1/2) 🧪 #science #fish

www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Hard bites and slow songs: How beak size affects the singing and evolution of songbirds Researchers have discovered that massive beaks and strong bites hinder the velocity of beak movement in songbirds. The musical differences that result may have consequences for evolution.

Hard biting #birds are slow singers - which has more consequences than you might think!

In my newest article, published in The Conversation, you can learn about how beak size affects the singing and #evolution of songbirds. 🪶

theconversation.com/hard-bites-a...

#ornithology #scicomm #science

Do you use 3D imaging like CT or MRI for research, teaching, outreach, or art? Check out our new article featuring a detailed workflow for producing 3D cinematic renderings―from tissue-level to whole-organism details―with stunning realism! doi.org/10.1016/j.is... @helsinkiuni.bsky.social

How human brains got so big: our cells learned to handle the stress that comes with size Understanding how human neurons cope with the energy demands of a large, active brain could open up new avenues for treating neurological disorders.

How human brains got so big: our cells learned to handle the stress that comes with size
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Figure showing diverse datasets analysed with SPROUT, including a skink skeleton, aardvark skull, human heart, concrete block, and foraminifera.

New paper! For all of you working with 3d scans (e.g. micro-CT, MRI), check out SPROUT, a rapid open-source tool for generating segmented and parcellated data, meaning your scans are separated into the individual elements without any manual labelling or training. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...