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?
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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"
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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 brains?"
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Re:I Don't Understand the Conclusion (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
That was my reaction. The attack seemed disproportionally aggressive. Killing the competition isn't a normal reaction. It seems more like fear than aggression. Curious if that could end up being another intelligence test whether animals also deal with a form of Uncanny Valley reaction. It's not universal since I've seen animals being fairly accepting of robotic animals. Gorillas don't normally have an aggressive reaction to people in gorilla suits, Rick Baker's crew dealt with that first hand on Graystoke by mixing with wild gorillas. Birds are different and look for subtle cues so they may react more strongly to "wrong" behavior. Moving oddly might be perceived as diseased so a dangerous threat to the gene pool.
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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.
Re:I Don't Understand the Conclusion (Score:4, Interesting)
You may laugh now, but with their proactive approach sparrows will be the ones surviving the zombie apocalypse.
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Yes! They knew exactly how to take out a zombie. Massive cranial trauma.
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Or it smelt funny because its a dead animal. Like you know, food.
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The article says that it was constructed with the help of a taxidermist. I doubt there was much in the way of rot going on, but it would probably smell funny (like plastic and glue).
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Maybe sparrows don't like the smell of formaldehyde?
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Sparrows can't smell much of anything, like most birds who aren't vultures.
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"...subjects responded more aggressively to the mount during wing waving trials than during stationary trials. A second experiment demonstrated that this effect cannot be attributed simply to increased attention to movement. Less expectedly, subjects did not alter their own display behavior in response to wing waving as compared to a static mount. We conclude that the wing wave display in the context of singing is a signal that functions in male–male aggressive communication. Questions remain, includ
Re:I Don't Understand the Conclusion (Score:4)
> 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.
That was my first thought too.
Going out on a limb here but... this is the article not the paper. My assumption would be, before going to check the paper out, that the reporter who wrote the article either misunderstood the test or possibly, his editor did, and either worded it badly, or an important statement or two got cut. ....now lets do a quick check,....and the abstract says.... the reporter/editor left shit out:
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Possibly the hypothesis connecting wing movement to aggression is not based on the /puppet's/ wing movements, but those of the living sparrows.
As in, as the /living sparrows/ became more aggressive, they displayed more wing movements.
You wouldn't to base any conclusions on the manipulated behaviors of the puppet anyway.
*Why* the living sparrows became increasingly aggressive (the the point of decapitation!) towards the puppet is unknown. Perhaps they were watching too many Romero movies.
I therefore conclude
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Awesome research but the last section puzzles me:
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?
Sparrow Connor taught him about Tweetie and Sequester.
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Sparrow Connor taught him about Tweetie and Sequester.
Tweetie and Sequester: How one bird reached across the aisle and averted the budget crisis.
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Sparrow Connor taught him about Tweetie and Sequester.
Tweetie and Sequester: How one bird reached across the aisle and averted the budget crisis.
And he said, "I think you're ... delicious."
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Or sparrow asks Robosparrow "Hi, who are you?" Robosparrow responds with "#$*@^(&*%@)^(#%&#)&*$@(&#%". Sparrow attacks.
Your seeds (Score:5, Funny)
Now
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Apparently, "Come with me if you want to live" was lost in the translation.
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Apparently, "Come with me if you want to live" was lost in the translation.
Tweet, twit-tweet-twit twit-twit-tweeeeeeet!
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I can't quite tell if you said that in the tyrant robotic bird in a swamp sense, the Monsanto legal team sense, or the "this experiment is so awesome that I demand the researchers' bukkake all over my body" sense.
Re:Your seeds (Score:5, Informative)
I can't quite tell if you said that in the tyrant robotic bird in a swamp sense, the Monsanto legal team sense, or the "this experiment is so awesome that I demand the researchers' bukkake all over my body" sense.
More like the "reference to a classic sci-fi movie that probably came out before you were but a twinkle in your father's eye" sense.
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Jesus God (Score:1)
Re:Jesus God (Score:5, Informative)
That's nothing. Consider this:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/medical-robots/ratbot-beats-on-live-rats-to-make-them-depressed [ieee.org]
Harry Harlow would be proud.
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Dutch got that eventuality covered already... (Score:4, Informative)
That zombiecatcopter [dailymail.co.uk] is out there.
It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until they are dead.
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If he could take time out from drunkenly abusing monkeys, yes.
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Heh. The banner ad at the bottom of the page is for Aerospace/Defense Whitepapers from IBM
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What has Science done !!??@!
Nothing my uncle the taxidermist hasn't.
If you think this is the first time that someone has ever had the idea to animate a taxidermy mount, you have obviously never been inside a Chuck E. Cheese's.
This is good news (Score:5, Funny)
Even sparrows hate the undead. Those zombies are going down.
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Sometimes I wonder about how researchers justify generalizing their conclusions. If someone put a robot inside a human corpse to study human social behavior they'd probably observe people shooting it with shotguns and trying to light it on fire. You can't say that the arm movements triggered the aggression.
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If someone put a robot inside a human corpse to study human social behavior they'd probably observe people shooting it with shotguns and trying to light it on fire. You can't say that the arm movements triggered the aggression.
Well, you could, but you'd probably be gunned down for being one of those damn zombie sympathizers...
Side Note: Boy, that gives 'bleeding heart' an all new connotation, now doesn't it?
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Sparrows are the carriers of the soul.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopomp [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Half [wikipedia.org]
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Even sparrows hate the undead. Those zombies are going down.
"Next on AMC The Sqawking Dead"
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Wait, is this about Robin being killed?
O.O (Score:3, Funny)
I am appalled at what science has done...
That said, I really want to see the YouTube video of this...
Re:O.O (Score:5, Informative)
There's video of the sparrow in the supplementary information tab on the abstract page in Quicktime format. The file 265_2013_1478_MOESM2_ESM.m4v is the one with footage of the reanimated sparrow. I'll warn you that it isn't exactly thrilling. No lurid sparrow on cybersparrow violence.
Of note is that they actually operated the mechanical bird inside a cage. I think the quote "Eventually the head fell off and the wing stopped moving" from the BBC article meant precisely that: the robobird fell apart from exposure to the elements and repeated trials.
The /. submitter appears to have wrongly inferred that this damage was from other sparrows tearing it apart, when in fact their aggressive behavior was "got close and waved menacingly."
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Looking again at the BBC article, they do mention physical attacks (and the page picture seems to be depicting one), so I went looking for the researcher's' own page [duke.edu], and it turns out there are some videos [duke.edu] of sparrows attacking a taxidermied sparrow. From the looks of it, they may have used the "robosparrow" with the motorized wing in a cage, since it was fragile and they only had one. This video [youtube.com] from 2011 of a live sparrow attacking a stationary taxidermied sparrow seems to suggest that there's no way the
But, was it... (Score:5, Funny)
an African or European swallow?
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I think the correct question is:
African spit or European swallow?
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I'd say a strand of creeper was involved, but this IS /., so there is no shortage of creepers here.
*bah dum bum*
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Finall we know the answer (Score:3, Funny)
Weekend at Bernie's (Score:2)
Obligatory IMDB link: "Weekend at Bernie's"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098627/ [imdb.com]
Better idea (Score:1)
Maybe live sparrows just hate cyborg/zombie sparrows?
I bet you thought this sparrow was alive (Score:1)
Nope, Chuck Testa.
Bad Horse? (Score:1)
Re: Bad Horse? (Score:1)
He rides across the nation; the thoroughbred of sin.
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He got the application that you just sent in...
Huh? (Score:1)
Does putting robotic pieces into a dead bird count as re-animation?
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The literal kind [wikipedia.org], I suppose. The other kind would probably be instead termed something like resuscitation, revivification or resurrection, depending on whether the subject is a little, mostly or all dead.
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No. Unless you don't know shit and feel creative. Seeing the rest of the article, i guess its actually content sources at The Union News..
Alive! It's alive! (Score:3)
http://imgur.com/iDdNnNk [imgur.com]
nope...
How is this ethical? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm no bird, but if they animated a human corpse by what appears to be magic and had it make threatening gestures at me until I freaked out and ripped its head off, I'd probably be very traumatized.
Oh, OK... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Oh, OK... (Score:4, Funny)
they just stuck some wires and gizmos up the ass of a dead sparrow
All is fair in the name of science
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Really? This is BETTER then bringing the dead back to life?
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"Eventually the head fell off" (Score:5, Funny)
The researchers, as quoted in the original article, describe the problem I've always had with re-animation:
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.
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Apparently, you have forgotten just how low slashdot standards really are.
Ex-Parrot (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm seriously disappointed in Slashdot. Not only did it take a good few minutes for someone to finally make a Monty Python reference, not one person has asked whether or not the Robosparrow ran/still runs Linux.
It's almost as if you've reddit all before and don't care about the articles.
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not one person has asked whether or not the Robosparrow ran/still runs Linux.
... and whether the python language is so concise that you need to "pad these python files out to 200 lines"...
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Repeat experiment with parrots
African or European?
Last seen riding a west bound scooter... (Score:3)
Oh! That's it! That's IT! I've had it with this dump! We got no food! We got no jobs! Our pets heads are falling off!
What the hell are we doing here Harry? We gotta get out of this town!
The King! (Score:2)
Pass me a shovel, I'm going to Graceland.
Hey AstroPhilosopher (Score:5, Funny)
This "news" would be as amusing as a 5 year-old "re-animating" his sockpuppet with Lego.
It'll be back! (Score:2)
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I hear it was looking for Sparrow Conner.
"Ah'll be bach." - RoboSparrow
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Is RoboSparrow good at composing music?
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Is RoboSparrow good at composing music?
No, but it does have political ambitions.
Welcome (Score:2)
Didn't you watch Prometheus? (Score:2)
That sparrow was simply incensed that puny humans would dare try to speak to him through such a crude facsimile. Ripping it's head off was the only means he had to communicate that to us in a language we could understand.
Original Poster (Score:1)
Nevermore (Score:1)
"Hey, check this out!" (Score:5, Funny)
"... We wrapped a robot in a dead sparrow and decided to see if we could fool the other sparrows into interacting with our creepy, ghoulish automaton! It's *science*!"
And of course, it was COMPLETELY UNEXPECTED that the grisly abomination stapled to a tree branch triggered aggressive reactions from the other sparrows. Because every living thing JUST LOVES to be confronted with a soulless golem wrapped in the dead flesh of another of its kind. And that never causes pants-shitting terror or anything.
I can see it now:
Sparrow 1: "OH MY GOD! IS THAT... *THING* ... WEARING FRANK'S FACE? IS IT?! FRANK??!?!" ...NOT! ...HIM! IT'S A MACHINE! Help me destroy it! Be his egg-layer one last time!"
Sparrow 2: "It's not him anymore. IT'S!
Sparrow 1: "*snf* OK... OK... oh God, Frank... God help me..."
Yup. Science.
Is there, like, a review board or anything? Maybe that could screen some horror flicks before writing checks for this kind of bullshit? "New rule: If your study is substantially similar to the plot of any one of this library of 100 horror movies, or if it has a plausible chance of producing similar outcomes, we're not going to fund it."
Notes on earlier versions (Score:2)
Kyle Reese: "The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy. But these are new." [imsdb.com]
My new favorite phrase... (Score:2)
"empty sparrow carcass".
tweet (Score:2)
Am I the only one that's surprised this thing wasn't hooked up to twitter to report its status?
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Am I the only one that's surprised this thing wasn't hooked up to twitter to report its status?
YES!
Let me guess (Score:2)
Idea Stolen from Robot Chicken (Score:2)
Movies/videos (Score:2)
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what you did there i see it
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African or European?
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