Two examples demonstrate how research on aquatic animals can benefit research on human swimmers. In the first example, work by comparative biomechanists studying animals that move through the air-water interface has shown that for competitive swimmers the optimal depth during the glide phase is the depth that minimizes surface waves. The second example contributes to the ongoing argument on the nature of thrust generation in freestyle swimming. The dominant view is that lift generates more thrust than drag. These forces arise from steady-state fluid dynamics, but the movement of the thrust-generating surfaces creates unsteady fluid motion. Recent work on aquatic animal locomotion has shown that unsteady mechanisms probably play an important role in generating thrust, so the thrust-generating mechanisms used by competitive swimmers should be reevaluated.
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