Terminator Sparrows? 138
AstroPhilosopher writes "In a move not far removed from the model T-101, U.S. researchers have succeeded in re-animating a dead sparrow. Duke scientists were studying male behavior aggression among sparrows. They cleverly decided to insert miniaturized robotics into an empty sparrow carcass and operate it like a puppet (abstract). It worked; they noticed wing movements were a primary sign of aggression. Fortunately the living won out this time. The experiment stopped after the real sparrows tore off the robosparrow's head. But there's always a newer model on the assembly-line. Good luck sparrows."
Bad Horse has not yet made a decision on the researchers' application.
I Don't Understand the Conclusion (Score:5, Insightful)
The living male birds were equally aggressive to Robosparrow whether its wing movements were activated or not, the researchers found.
"It confirmed our hypothesis that the wing-waving behaviour is functioning male aggressive communication," said Dr Anderson.
Wouldn't the first sentence imply that nothing can be determined? I mean, it sounds like they weren't beating the shit out of robosparrow because of his wing movements but more so because he was going around looking for Sparrow Connor.
But in all serious does anyone know how they came to that conclusion given the seemingly arbitrary constant aggression?
Re:I Don't Understand the Conclusion (Score:5, Insightful)
It certainly looks like a pair of conflicting statements...did they never consider that they'd triggered an "Uncanny Valley" reaction in the sparrows and they were being aggressive towards the cyborg-zombie sparrow?
Re:But, was it... (Score:2, Insightful)
Terrible summarization (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a terrible summary even by /. standards.
Both terminator and 'reanimate' have completely different inferred meanings than what the story is actually about.
Re:I Don't Understand the Conclusion (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah... if this were to happen with humans, I could see that just about anyone would try to take down a random robo-zombie with a baseball bat or shotgun blast to the head!
There's not going to be any "Oh hey... are you okay, man? You look pale, and your eyes are dull and you move with an unnatural jerky movement... did you eat some bad shellfish?"
It's going to be screaming and mayhem.
BEST CAPTCHA EVER: "automata"
Re:I Don't Understand the Conclusion (Score:3, Insightful)
Gorillas don't normally have an aggressive reaction to people in gorilla suit.
Apples vs. Oranges.
How would gorillas react to someone in a suit made out of a dead gorilla? You know: with rotting flesh smell and dead eyes.
It must have a robotic whirring noise to be a fair comparison.