A locust with a foam-tipped antenna just out-sniffed our best sensors

A locust's antenna carries around 50,000 smell-sensing neurons — a nose no engineer has matched. At Washington University in St. Louis, Barani Raman and Srikanth Singamaneni asked what would happen if that nose got a helper: an ultralight nanomaterial foam, fitted to the antenna, that grabs trace chemicals and names them precisely. In tests published in Advanced Materials, the foam-tipped locusts outperformed both unaided locusts and synthetic sensors at identifying chemicals. The dream behind the work is rescue, not novelty: insects that can slip into earthquake rubble and report back the chemical signatures rescuers are searching for.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: tech innovation