By determining how a desert plant’s seed pods unfurl when they get wet, biologists discovered new principles for designing materials that respond to their environments. Eventually, the insights may help engineers improve satellites or develop artificial muscles.

Biologist Matthew Harrington and his colleagues at Germany’s Max Planck Institute set out to explain the mysteries of the “ice plant,” Delosperma nakurense, a succulent that grows in arid and semi-arid regions of eastern Africa. The plant has adapted to dry conditions by producing special seed capsules that protect their cargo with a...