Students strut their engineering stuff on Chasing Nature

Starting this month, Animal Planet`s new show, Chasing Nature, will feature more than a dozen Stanford engineering students designing and building devices that mimic the amazing capabilities of animals. Viewers will see how the students measure up against a real master of engineering—Mother Nature.

In a preview episode that aired this Sunday, student Josh Arvizu helped design an apparatus to protect an artificial brain from damage caused by head-on, high-speed collisions. The goal was to imitate the big horn ram.

Chasing Nature is broadcast Tuesdays from 8 to 9 p.m. in the Pacific time zone. Stanford students are featured in the following episodes (episodes air multiple times; only initial air dates are listed):

Dec. 13. Alfonso Pulido, Leslie Oley, Mark Bianco and David Lu`s apparatus mimics a bird of prey, impressive for its ability to plunge from great heights and snatch fish out of water with its claws.

Jan. 31. Michael Lin helps design and build a scorpion tail on the rear of a small racecar, which can chase and sting its prey.

Feb. 7. Jonathan Thomas` creation mimics the orangutan, which with its enormous arm span and incredible strength can easily swing from tree to tree.

March 7. James Parle and Jenny Erhart build a set of four stilts to replicate giraffe legs and run an obstacle course filled with ``predators`` dressed to look like lions, leopards and crocodiles.

March 14. Sun Koo Kim`s object-detecting device replicates the bat`s sonar hunting abilities. Blindfolded and tethered to the ceiling of a giant cave, he chases balloon ``insects`` without running into a cave wall made of long balloons.

Air date to be announced. Helping design and make one of the world`s fastest tongues, Alison Wong endeavors to copy the chameleon, which climbs out on branches and fires its tongue to catch its prey.

Air date to be announced. Neal Tanner and Alice Ryan labor to emulate a dolphin leaping more than 6 feet above the surface and through an obstacle course.

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