DailyDirt: Animals Augmented With Technology

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Tue, Aug 26th 2014 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Computers have undoubtedly changed how people live, and as computers get smaller and wearable, they'll only become more and more intertwined with our lives. And it appears that we can't leave our animal friends behind in this technological evolution. Here are just a few projects for getting other creatures addicted to gadgets.

Second Livestock is a virtual reality environment designed for farm animals, specifically chickens. Imagine a chicken computer interface -- like an Oculus Rift for chickens -- that tricked the birds into thinking they were actually free-range animals when, in fact, they were still caged on an omnidirectional treadmill with a Matrix-like virtual world fed into their brains. There is no spoon, chicks. (And this Second Life adaptation is only a suggestion.) [url]
Maybe we can start talking to dolphins with technology developed by one of the inventors of Google Glass. Researchers are just starting to hear dolphins "talk" in computer-recognizable whistles, so maybe we'll hear they say, "So long and thanks for all the fish" someday. [url]
Bonobos controlling a robot sounds like a cool idea, but apparently not $20,000 on Kickstarter cool. Perhaps we're lucky that crowdfunders didn't kickstart a planet of the apes.... [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

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Filed Under: animals, bonobos, dolphin, hmi, interspecies communication, oculus rift, second life, second livestock, virtual reality

5 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 26 Aug 2014 @ 6:08pm

Dogmentation. That is all.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Aug 2014 @ 4:16am

Cybernetic augmentation for mosquitoes that makes them fight diseases instead of spreading them. Gotta love the irony of mosquitoes helping to stamp out malaria.

The only part I can't figure out is how to modify them into medical implements while preserving the food chain by keeping them edible.
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Rekrul, 27 Aug 2014 @ 7:13am

That robotic ape is scary looking!
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Aug 2014 @ 9:16am

I would like to state for the record that I fully support the policies of our new primate cyborg overlords, and hope they see the benefit of people like me in their plans to reeducate and care for the human race.

Remember, our cyborg primate overlords are our friends.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Aug 2014 @ 3:02pm

El Pollo: I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us, you're afraid of chickens. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to squawk about how this is going to end, I came here to squawk about how it's going to begin: I'm going to hang up this phone and then I'm going to show these chickens what you don't want them to see, I'm going to show them a world without you, a world without factory farms, without pens or cages, a world where free range is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.
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