{"id":535006,"date":"2018-10-15T18:00:01","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T22:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?guid=c570b70c3c6264c516612de3f30cc7f3"},"modified":"2018-10-15T18:00:01","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T22:00:01","slug":"swishing-tails-guard-against-voracious-insects-with-curtain-of-breeze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=535006","title":{"rendered":"Swishing tails guard against voracious insects with curtain of breeze"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bothersome insects are a predicable summer hazard. Swatting them can almost become a sport, but some irritable horses enjoy taking shots at something larger. &#8216;I have been hit many times in the face, and even the eye, by a naughty horse&#8217;s tail&#8230; Sometimes it seems like they&#8217;re actually aiming for you&#8217;, laughs Marguerite Matherne from the Georgia Institute of Technology, who recounted the anecdote to her PI, David Hu, when she joined his lab. With a track record of interest in the mechanics of animal grooming, Hu&#8217;s imagination was gripped. How could the horse aim a tail flick with such deadly precision? &#8216;[It] seemed like a question &#8220;hidden in plain sight&#8221;&#8216;, chuckles Matherne, recognising that the puzzle presented her with the ideal opportunity to combine her life-long passion for all things equestrian with a career in biomechanics. Matherne, Hu and colleagues publish their discovery that animals swish their tails to generate a curtain of breeze that wafts insects away in Journal of Experimental Biology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bothersome insects are a predicable summer hazard. Swatting them can almost become a sport, but some irritable horses enjoy taking shots at something larger. &#8216;I have been hit many times in the face, and even the eye, by a naughty horse&#8217;s tail&#8230; Someti&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-535006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=535006"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":535008,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535006\/revisions\/535008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=535006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=535006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=535006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}