Researchers have now investigated what mechanical performance advantages this may provide, and reckon it has immense robotic applications.

Clemson University engineers have found the ideal way to fix up robots with flexible steely arms, in a piece published in Science, with the pleasantly explicit title "Why the seahorse tail is square".

While most animal tails are cylindrical, the skeleton of seahorse tails consists of bony armour arranged into several ringlike segments – themselves composed of four L-shaped plates that surround a central vertebra, according to the structured abstract.

These plates are known to articulate with specialised joints that allow them to bend and twist, while remaining capable of resisting vertebral fracture from crushing.

The scientists wanted to figure out if the square tails gave seahorses any functional advantage.

To determine this, they 3D-printed a model which mimicked the prism of a seahorse tail, as well as a control version which was cylindrical.

According to the university's press release, researchers then "whacked the models with a rubber mallet and twisted and bent them."