A weakly electric fish surrounds itself with a field, then feels the shape of every disturbance across its skin.

A folded robot can leave a swallowed capsule, crawl magnetically, and retrieve a button battery from a stomach model.

Kenneth Libbrecht changes temperature and humidity, then lets water molecules choose the snowflake's final architecture.

Chaser could retrieve one named toy from a collection containing more than a thousand learned objects.

A light-emitting polymer can keep glowing while the surface beneath it bends and stretches.

An upside-down jellyfish passes the behavioral tests for sleep without possessing a centralized brain.

A solar array can harvest electricity above the same ground where tomatoes harvest light and water.

For one official delivery, the mailbag was loaded into a submarine-launched cruise missile.

A gecko restores a dirty adhesive surface by walking on it.

Some of the Smithsonian's most precise specimen preparators are colonies of hungry beetles.