How does a lobster find food in a turbulent ocean where chemical signals vanish for minutes at a time , and what can a robot lobster teach us about the strategies that work and fail? Frank Grasso explores the neuroscience of olfactory search through biomimetic robotics. Subscribe for more from the Convergent Science Network podcast series. Frank Grasso studies "crunchies and squishies", lobsters and octopuses, not because they resemble us, but precisely because they do not. These animals face the same physical challenges as vertebrates but solve them with completely different brain and body architectures, revealing the true design space for adaptive behavior. His laboratory at Brooklyn College builds robot models of these animals, tests them under identical conditions to the real organisms, and uses the animal's performance as a yardstick for eva ...