 To jump or not to jump, that's the question these squirrels in Berkeley's eucalyptus grove seem to be asking. Researchers enticed the free-roaming squirrels with nuts to examine how they leap and how they land. Capturing all those squirrel hurdles on high-speed cameras, they then took all kinds of measurements to better understand the squirrel's amazing maneuvers. The researchers changed the flexibility of the branches, the length of the gap squirrels had to clear, and the position of the landing perch, and the squirrels adapted with surprising creativity. Not just doing their amazing grabbing, their amazing swinging, but on flimsier branches deciding to run less and jump farther. And even more surprisingly, on the most flexible rods, it took just five tries to learn to stick their landing spot on. No faltering, no swinging. And to reach that higher farther perch, parkour. Bouncing off the wall to adjust their speed and reach their nut, along with using those unyielding gripping skills, not one landing lost. Impressive feet, you might say. Berkeley scientists hoped to build these squirrel-y techniques into new, smarter robots. Advancing robotics, you guessed it, by leaps and bounds.