Panic has always been something of a mystery. In an evolutionary sense, it's strange that thrashing your arms and legs around randomly would be a good behavior to learn. Strangely enough, it turns out that such Foolish Behavior could actually be helpful in the real world.
Apparently, scientists training a robot to walk in different ways using a neural network have found that panic can be helpful to get that robot out of sticky situations, particularly when one of its legs gets stuck. Whether panic in humans is some sort of evolutionary hold-over, or the joke of a Foolish Creator, remains to be seen.
