The opening statement tries to clear up what the heck they are talking about. Dirty Science!

"Scientists say their new snake robot has cracked the tricky problem of slithering up slippery mounds."

Goldman and his Crabby colleagues (Complex Rheology And Biomechanics Lab ("the Crab Lab") at the Georgia Institute of Technology) were determined to find out just how it is that the enigmatic "sidewinder" rattlesnakes of America manage to squirm their way up slippery sand dunes, a notoriously tricky form of terrain to get about on - and which leaves other snakes baffled.

When reading the headline I was going in a totally different direction, but it is the wee hours of Sunday morning and I have not had my coffee yet....



"Our laboratory experiments reveal that as granular incline angle increases, sidewinder rattlesnakes increase the length of their body in contact with the sand. Implementing this strategy in a physical robot model of the snake enables the device to ascend sandy slopes close to the angle of maximum slope stability ... sidewinding with contact-length control mitigates failure on granular media."

Hard to miss the tongue-in-cheek here.

Source: The Register