DailyDirt: Animals Augmented With Technology

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

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.

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