A research paper on seahorse's square-shaped tail has stated that it could help encourage the development of more flexible and durable robots in the coming time. The researchers have termed its tail as a marvel of natural engineering.

The study researchers have explained that the tail used to hold things is made of around 36 square segments having cross sections in it. It was quite strange to see this especially on a water-dwelling animal.

Study's lead researcher Michael Porter said he started studying the material from which seahorse's skeleton is made up of. Along studying it, the researchers also started to work on a project involving building of a steerable catheter.

Porter said the design worked better in a square cross section than when it was round. "The square one just felt better. It felt like it basically fit together better and just performed more robustly, whereas the round one just didn't really hold its shape well and just didn't seem to fit together as well", affirmed Porter, a mechanical engineer at Clemson University in South Carolina.

The project's result made him realize that the square design might have some advantage over the circle. But he had to prove the same. The researchers came up with 3-D-printed models of the sea horse's vertebral columns and armored plates and joined them with springs and elastic to imitate the natural connections between those plates.

In the next stage, the researchers designed a new set of plates. In this design, they made it round instead of L-shaped corner plates and built crescent-shaped plates. The researchers then compressed those plates and noticed that the square plates could easily squeeze inward while maintaining their shape. The findings of the sea horse could help scientists to develop more flexible robots.