Thursday, September 16, 2010

Bionic Animals

People care a lot for animals. What sucks the most for them is when they loose limbs. It further hinders their ability to survive.
However, bionics as a field has stepped up to the plate. I've heard of everything from a turtle being given new fins, to dolphin getting a new tail, to an eagle getting a new beak, to a cockatoo having its entire legs replaced.
Perhaps people feel that it's silly to expend so much effort on an animal, but it's good practice for us humans, who also lose body parts at a larger rate than we'd like.

7 comments:

Beans said...

One of my friends is a vet... he was once employed to perform surgery on a chicken.... :)

Professor Preposterous said...

I'm guessing a pet chicken. A farm chicken who needed surgery would just be converted to food.

Hope it worked out well.

Beans said...

It was actually for illegal cockfighting which still happens in the UK now and again as does bareknuckle boxing and dog fighting...


What might make an interesting engineering concept is how to make cybernetic parts. Not normal prosthetics you see today which run on internal batteries but instead are linked to your body's chemical energy systems.

Much like GM crops it would certainly be a nasty form of indenture to have to buy XYZ brand of batteries to allow a prosthetic body to run.

My pension plans circa 2045 is a near total body cyborg prosthesis. Much like this video.

TCG (as Beans cus signing in is finicky and keeps deleting my posts!)

Beans said...

Ahem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBqGC9sVBXY&feature=related

Professor Preposterous said...

Cybernetic parts are totally possible with today's technology, though they would be way cruder than depicted in Ghost in the Shell.

I'll get started on writing it up.

TwoYaks said...

Cybernetics have power issues - the weight and inconvenience of recharging the power supply is one of the big barriers to their acceptance (or so said some engineers that were interviewed a while back on the radio). Kinda like your talking about electric cars earlier, if someone could come up with a convenient way to store large amounts of energy, it'd make lots of cool cybernetic thingies practical.

Professor Preposterous said...

We already have a moderate store of energy in our bodies. Blood glucose.

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