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Scientists make a real-life mechanical squirrel
This one is just barely related to World of Warcraft, but it's just too good to pass up: behold, Engineers of all races. Our real-life scientists are working on your favorite companion. Animal behavior scientists at Hampshire College have created a real-life mechanical squirrel.And "Rocky," as they call him, is a lot more helpful than the noncombat version in Azeroth -- apparently by using the robot squirrel to mimic real-life squirrel behavior, they can "decode" what squirrels are saying. And supposedly that will help them figure out the same behavior (or at least parallels) in humans.Their mechanical squirrel looks a little more realistic than ours -- they must have added some wool in with the Malachite and the Copper Modulator. But if science can do this with a mechanical squirrel, just think what could be accomplished with an exploding sheep![Via WoW Ladies LJ]
Robotic squirrel used to study real-life squirrel behavior, steal nuts
Most of the squirrels on our college campus were massive, hyper-intelligent little beasts that were best dealt with by vigilant avoidance, but it looks like Hampshire College professor Sarah Partan is taking the opposite approach, using a robotic squirrel named "Rocky" to interact with the local rodents up close. Rocky is controlled wirelessly from a laptop, and can realistically move his tail and body to communicate with other squirrels, as well as play pre-recorded squirrel noises from built-in speakers. The goal is to study how animals communicate, and it looks like Rocky's doing a good job -- the local squirrels seem to respond to him just like any other. That's pretty impressive for a bot (or pretty weak for the squirrels, depending on your point of view), but we're just waiting for Partan and her team to discover the shocking truth: that the squirrels are really studying them.
