Boston Dynamics Wildcat Can Gallop — No Strings Attached 257
Boston Dynamics has been making eye-catching (and sort of creepy) military-oriented robots for several years, and we've noted several times the Big Dog utility robot. The newest creation is the untethered, gas-powered Wildcat; this is definitely not something I want chasing after me. (Not as fast as the previous, tethered version — yet.)
Not something I want chasing after me (Score:5, Funny)
Kinda reminds me of my ex, actually. Fast, noisy, high maintenance.
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Government waste (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Government waste (Score:5, Funny)
Horse? Not even close.
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Re:Government waste (Score:5, Insightful)
there is no nuclear reactor design that could power that thing like a gas engine can.
If there was we could have nuclear powered electric cars.
I really wish people could understand that. the small nuclear reactors could power a laptop or two for 30 years but could never produce enough electricity fast enough to run a clothes dryer for one run.
Second,
people see horse or mule and can't conceive of a horse or mule getting scared of bullets flying by and or getting shot. using a horse to carry your gear only works until the horse gets shot. then the horse runs away with your gear.
Re:Government waste (Score:5, Insightful)
I really wish people could understand that. the small nuclear reactors could power a laptop or two for 30 years but could never produce enough electricity fast enough to run a clothes dryer for one run.
You know, people would be more likely to understand that if we could stop this business of calling RTGs "reactors". The concept of a "reactor" (whether chemical, biological, or nuclear) is usually that it provides some form of support for a reaction to take place which otherwise would not take place, or would only take place in a different, less useful/safe/something way.
Radioactive decay is not in any meaningful sense a "reaction", and would be happening to the Pu (or other "fuel", if you're using something different) whether or not it's in the RTG, at essentially the same rate, generating the same amount of heat. The only thing the RTG does is feed the decay heat through a heat engine (typically a Seebeck device, but there's some work using a Stirling engine), to extract some work from the heat flow -- no reaction, so it's no reactor.
Ordinarily, I'd call such a distinction as this useless pedantry, and not engage in it, but you're correct that there's a problem with people being ignorant about RTGs and thinking they have capabilities they don't -- and since I'm convinced the general habit of calling RTGs "nuclear reactors" contributes to this, I think it's a distinction worth making.
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So then the question becomes, could an actual fission reactor be designed small and powerful enough to power a car (or horse) -like vehicle?
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So then the question becomes, could an actual fission reactor be designed small and powerful enough to power a car (or horse) -like vehicle?
Short version, no. There are no nuclear fuels with the right balance of properties to achieve that. Long version: go Wikipedia nuclear fission [wikipedia.org], fissile [wikipedia.org], and critical mass [wikipedia.org].
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a small nuclear reactor
Get off the crack. There is no such thing as a "small nuclear reactor". Nuclear isotope battery maybe - if you guys still had the plutonium for them (lol!), but nuclear reactors are not "small", unless you don't shield them at all and want this thing to kill hostiles and friendlies through radiation sickness. They can't even fit nuclear reactors on an aircraft, let alone something like this.
Re:Government waste (Score:5, Funny)
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I know what you mean by reasoning with it. I once brought my horse to some water, and by gum no argument I could devise would make it drink.
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Re:Government waste (Score:5, Insightful)
Because if you strap a bomb to it, and then blow it up, someone will complain...
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Yes, and journeys in early motorised carriages could have been done quicker and cheaper using horses. ;)
Not very good at the old forward-thinking thing, are you
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This is being funded by DARPA.
In the military, there is a place for everything.
Sometimes you want a horse, sometimes a mule,
and sometimes a robot that can be air dropped alongside troops and other equipment.
Have you ever thought about the logistics of getting a large, live animal to a staging point in the middle of [shitty and hostile territory]?
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Robots probably cost a lot less in the long run. Think of the industrial horse farms that would be needed to supply the military. A small assembly line could crank out thousands of these a month.
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Plus upkeep. The mechanical horse only needs to be fed when you're using it, and you can store it in a crate no bigger than itself.
Re:Government waste (Score:5, Funny)
Why not just use a horse? Costs less, more reliable, powered by renewable resources ... the horse.
And edible.
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You sick bastard.
I prefer soylent green anyway.
Re:Government waste (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah his own link stated that only one human has won that Welsh race so far.
My personal hypothesis is humans may (or may not) have started running to hunt animals, but they really got better at it (and got better fast) because of War not because of hunting. Yes some tribal people chase down food animals for hours. But most don't. We use our brains. We prefer to spend our time doing other things instead of running around. Traps, ambushes, chasing animals over a cliff or into a dead end. The other land predat
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You ever try leaving a horse in a garage unattended for a few months, and then ride it when the time finally comes that you need it? Sure, a robot may need a little grease on the joints and a 10 point inspection after it has been in storage, but you don't need a bunch of land and people and resources to keep it healthy "just in case." Also, have you ever tried to field repair a horse with a detached leg? You can just screw it back together with basic tools, or send in another horse with a fresh leg, righ
Re:Government waste (Score:5, Interesting)
Because billions of years of evolving something that is incredibly good at what it does isn't deemed "high tech" enough
Evolution is slow. Evolution goes by trial and error rather than absolutely optimized engineering design and QA, and doesn't have any kind of recursive ability so as to improve its own methods. Sure, give it billions of years and the absolute minimum optimization capability and it'll make something that works pretty well, up to and including the human brain, but that's it. Now, give those human brains a solvable challenge and they'll work it out in a matter of centuries, if not decades, years or even just months.
So, sure, right now horses are better, after all nature got a few hundred millions years advantage before allowing us to start running, but we're catching up, and fast, very, very fast. In a few decades no living thing other than human beings will have any advantage left over our technologically-developed alternatives. And then it'll come the time for technology to outgrow even that last remaining bastion of biological-over-technological superiority too.
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There is not one thing it can do that can't be done better by existing technology, it's a mediocre re-invention of the wheel.
That's true of any technology on its origins: steam engines, electricity, telephones, cars, airplanes, computers, fission, networks. What matters isn't what it can do now while it's still a crude 1st or 2nd gen prototype, but the whole set of developments that can be imagined deriving from it down the line, and even more so those that cannot be imagined. For example, think about all the things that wheel- and steering-based robot's can't do now but legged ones could, or all the hazardous environments living
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Well when you put it like that it does not sound at all worrying.
Why should it be? If we don't mess things up technology overcoming biology doesn't mean human beings become extinct, or at least not at what matters: our minds, emotions, sentiments, desires etc. What it means is human beings living for centuries, millennia or more as technological beings. Uploaded minds, electromechanical bodies, physical immortality, space exploration without having to worry about generation ships because taking 400 years to fly from one point to another won't be a problem, and so on and
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Lets look at it this way:
Horses take a long time to mature. These things take a week or two to assemble (assuming they go through QA procedures, environmental, shock & vibe, etc.)
Horses can go for couple days or more on food. This thing only a couple of hours.
Horses spook easily and less easily with training. These will never spook.
Horses can follow simple commands. This can follow complex commands,
Both need fuel and water. Horses need lots of support by bringing their food/water to the battle fiel
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"With the addition of this tech and a gun, this new robot can run around, hunt, kill, and devour victims as a fuel source."
Didn't TOS:The Doomsday Machine make a point about how dangerously foolish/stupid an idea this is. Oops, military thinking here, all it has to do is kill efficiently. The cleaning up afterward is for the peacemakers/survivors/colonists who have to face the long term effects of the short term thinking of warriors.
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Well, one has to ask, why did horses go out of fashion in warfare in the first place? The supplanting of draft animals with gasoline vehicles happened extremely rapidly as such things go. Consider the gasoline powered military vehicles of WW1 [wikipedia.org], and that these all came into use less than a decade after the introduction of the first successfully mass produced automobile.
The reason for the rapid changeover to internal combustion was that the logistical demands of supporting draft animals is overwhelming. Pre
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Actually, that would be pretty easy. Some paddles on the side to push on just below the withers and some servos attached to the bridle. Some cameras to figure out where you're going. The software could be relatively unsophisticated as the horse has very advanced terrain following firmware already installed.
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bound by natural selection... (Score:3)
Boston Dynamics is a typical example of... (Score:5, Insightful)
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the military will never be defunded. even now during a government shutdown the military can still force certain areas to keep development going.
Second you have to teach the dog to walk before you can teach it how to watch for cars.
Normal animals learn to walk on day one of their life. robotic ones are dumber than that. Some one needs to teach it to walk in public without a tether. Even asmiov that walking honda robot, can only do preprogramed areas.
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Normal animals learn to walk on day one of their life. robotic ones are dumber than that.
And humans are dumbest of all: it takes a human about 1.5 years to learn to walk decently.
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Well, of course it does. We evolved to climb in trees. Monkeys and apes don't walk decently on two legs either.
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No we didn't. We evolved to be long-distance runners. [discovermagazine.com]
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Why not? It works for horses and other prey animals. The big difference between them and us is that human babies start out really stupid, and get much smarter as they reach adulthood (well, most of us anyway...); horses don't get much smarter than they are when they're born. Of course, the other big difference is probably hip size; humans would probably need bigger hips and a larger birth canal to allow infants to grow larger while still gestating.
Re:Boston Dynamics is a typical example of... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, a lot of our technological advances originate (or are refined to the point of being actually functional) from military projects such as this. We're all communicating over one of them [wikipedia.org] right now.
Less Personal Risk == Less Hostile Action (Score:2)
I would argue that developing forms of robotics for the battlefield (autonomous or not) has a huge potential to reduce hostility. Decision making on the battlefield in person has to take into consideration enemies, civilians and friendlies, and a naturally increased hostility is present due to the personal risk involved. With robots you can forget about the personal risk forget about friendlies and concentrate on separating civilians from hostiles, it makes combat one dimension simpler.
Also robots can be se
Re:Boston Dynamics is a typical example of... (Score:5, Insightful)
The military is like porn in that respect. There's a lot of money to be made in creating new tech that serves either one. And once that tech is somewhat matured, it can then start finding new uses that weave it into everyday life.
To reverse the situation, why didn't people build the first automated robots as guide "dogs" for the blind? Or go back into history and ask yourself why were phonograph players marketed to everyone for playing music first, and not as 19th Century audio-books for the blind? Because Thomas Edison wanted to make a lot of money, and selling a handful of record players to some blind people weren't going to pay his bills. Selling a handful of guide-dog robots won't pay the staff at Boston Dynamics, either.
People who create things want to make money from what they do. That means they either try to sell their things to the people who have the most money, or they sell their things to a really broad group of customers. At this time there doesn't seem to be a broad domestic market for robotic wildcats, nor for a lot of four-legged-self-balancing-motorized porn robots. That kind of leaves the military as their go-to source of large piles of cash.
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You got the money, honey, I've got the time.
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That will come. Military technologies generally make it down to the consumer but only the military can afford to pay for the R&D into such things. Once it is produced, used and does all its killing, it will make it down to the consumer for exactly what you say.
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Science fiction...
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
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What remains to be seen if it is fiction or not is: Because the robot is loyal to whomever sets it up, one rogue billio
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I did mention it was fiction, btw. I never said that governments or individuals would feel bound by any of those in real life. I totally agree with your analysis - greed and the lust for power trumps decency every time.
Thinking through the implications of robotics (Score:2)
"Because the robot is loyal to whomever sets it up, one rogue billionaire can buy up a robot army and conquer his choice of any number of banana republics that he wants. ... So a single man to conquer a nation wouldn't be unheard of. In fact no one might even know who is the man who conquered their country."
Good points in theory Something related I created:
"The richest man in the world: A parable about robotics, abundance, technological change, unemployment, happiness, and a basic income.":
http://www.youtub [youtube.com]
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...really smart people creating things - "war machines" to be blunt - [...]... My 2 Cents. Feel free to disagree...
"Fun fact; before he built rockets for the Nazis, the idealistic Werner von Braun dreamed of space travel, he star gazed. Do you know what he said when the first V2 hit London? 'The rocket performed perfectly, it just landed on the wrong planet.' See we all begin wide-eyed, pure science. And then the ego steps in, the obsession. And you look up, you're a long way from shore."
-- Maya Hansen, Iron Man 3
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If there were more money for hugging bunnies, you'd be 100% correct. As it is, it's only a commentary on our society, and you're somewhere less than 100% correct, though certainly not all wrong. Someday down the line, we'll get robot rescue dogs. Right now, we're going to get robot murder dogs.
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I do disagree.
I find your moralism absurd and completely naive, albeit disappointingly common in the Western world.
First, it's ENTIRELY too easy - from your presumably perfectly safe environment - too pooh-pooh disparagingly the necessity of military technology. How do you think we GOT to a situation in which (for most of us in the first world anyway) most of us can assume correctly that our entire lives will be spent peacefully in blissful ignorance of the consequences of war across our homes, our familie
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You realize that the only reason you have a computer to moralize with, and an Internet to transmit your words of wisdom, is because of military applications. Right?
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" is because of military applications. Right?"
People were dreaming/developing projects long before military applications came along. Military applications was just the easiest excuse to get large sums of money when the project needed it.
Meh (Score:2)
I for one... (Score:2)
I for one welcome our military petrol-powered gigantic robot flea overlords.
Hey, that's cool... (Score:2)
More like a WildSheep (Score:2)
It is designed closer to a Sheep and even runs like sheep do. I really would like to see them make one like a cat that can run, crouch and leap like a cat can. then we will have something that is fearsome.
Imagine that thing leaping a 60 foot ditch at you.
Re: Why BD robots move the way they do (Score:3)
I really would like to see them make one like a cat that can run, crouch and leap like a cat can. then we will have something that is fearsome.
That requires a different approach to control than the one they're using. All the Boston Dynamics quadruped robots start up by trotting in place, then extending the stride.
Kinda weird noone said this yet... (Score:2)
Huh...
They invented the rat thing.
Though admittedly a huge, noisy, much slower and significantly less radioactive rat thing.
Still though...
Re:Only one purpose (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't order a horse to carry gear to specified coordinates unattended. Horses don't climb rough terrain particularly well either.
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Helicopters aren't easy to hide. That's why they have a habit of getting shot down a lot, particularly when they operate in the daytime. The purpose the Boston Dynamics quadrapeds are being developed for is to provide additional load carrying for troops operating in difficult terrain. Otherwise you'd just use wheeled vehicles (although they also sacrifice stealthiness by kicking up dust).
Re:Only one purpose (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with helicopters is that small arms can bring them down. A helicopter armored to the level of an A-10 will not get off the ground. The mule is the UGV. Deliver ordinance to a location unmanned and without human risk. As a support vehicle, they are not yet ready for prime-time.
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Right, because this is the kind of thing you should think of when considering a stealthy approach [youtube.com]
I guess you could remove vocal chords or something. but for that matter, I'm quite sure that someone has already considering the noise of the demo robot and noise cancellation features would be included on a production model (or, you know, don't power it with a lawnmower engine).
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Sorry, I don't buy it. This thing is the antithesis of stealthy. When it's moving it's constantly bouncing up and down and can be heard from the next valley. So to actually move your troops anywhere, they have to telegraph their position. Any kind of pack mule is infinitely superior to this monstrosity in the situation you describe.
They're still working on the software and hardware to perfect moving like a animal. Stealth comes later. This obviously has no practical purpose yet and your retort makes no sense.
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It's a *prototype*. The power supply can be rengineered to use something other than an IC engine in the future.
Re:Only one purpose (Score:4, Funny)
I thought the noise was a safety feature, to warn people to get the fuck out of the way of the infernal contraption.
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Maybe we should invest in researching mind-control helmets for donkeys, then.
Okay, that was a joke, but perhaps an automated mechanical rider (that operated the reins and stirrups) would almost be practical...
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To hell with that. If we're remote-controlling horses/donkeys, lets not recreate a human-horse interface. Lets create a machine-horse interface. Maybe something like a headset that gives sound-commands indicating range and direction binaurally. That way the horse can follow along a set of waypoints. Give it a 2-way radio, and we can send updated orders, and can get status updates on progress.
The whole setup will be quieter and longer-range with a longer possible mission time.
Re:Only one purpose (Score:4, Funny)
"Maybe we should invest in researching mind-control helmets for donkeys,"
Because congress would kill funding thinking it would be used on them.
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You can't order a horse to carry gear to specified coordinates unattended. Horses don't climb rough terrain particularly well either.
No, but maybe you could add a GPS system and a couple of servos to pull on the reins like a real rider would.
It would be a lot cheaper/quieter than this thing...
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Real riders steer with their legs.
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Whereas this thing trips over itself on a flat surface and has a step height of a few inches, making it far better for rough terrain.
If we're talking about the WildCat video, it looked like the front right leg joint broke when it fell, not that it tripped. If that's the case, it's just an engineering problem to reinforce that joint.
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It's the back legs that go the wrong way. But I agree it looks odd.
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I consulted Wikipedia about bone names: in a cat (and many outer quadrupeds) the tarsal joint forms what is the "knee" in our legs, and the metatarsals are the lowest segment of the leg. The joint happens to point backwards, and consequently it looks "right" to us, and a robot with its knees pointing forward looks "creepy".
The Boson Dynamics people obviously found that it's somehow beneficial to have that joint pointing forward rather than backward, and they have the freedom to engineer it that way. Nature
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What's your point? Mules can't climb everything a man can either. Maybe the US Gov. should start a program to breed militarized, obedient pack mountain goats to keep you satisfied.
early cars, search & rescue, unexploded ordina (Score:4, Insightful)
Horses were better than early cars. So they shouldn't have developed cars?
I could see advanced legged robots being useful in search & rescue in rough terrain, unexploded ordinance disposal (think IEDs), and several other applications. I'd like to take some of this company's robots and engineers out to our training area, Disaster City.
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"I'd like to take some of this company's robots and engineers out to our training area, Disaster City."
Which Disaster City? There's quite a few just in the USA alone.
TEEX (first 5 Google results) (Score:2)
TEEX, Texas Engineering Extension Service.
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Re:Only one purpose (Score:5, Insightful)
This. Horses are a real PITA in the field. Fuel is bulky, they're heavy. Hard to drop out of planes (successfully anyway). They don't always do what you want them to do (Whoa Nelly!). They resent being shot at or blown up.
Of course, these aren't all that practical yet. It's basically electronic animal 101. But BD has some impressively cool tech. Their big problem is the energy source. Internal combustion engines are just so 20th century.
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Maybe they'll get with Tesla, and put an all-day lithium pack in one.
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You complain about how fuel for horses is bulky, then object to using an internal combustion engine (which runs on the most convenient fuel known to mankind)? That does not make sense.
Re: Only one purpose (Score:2)
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So whenever I read about things like this, my initial reaction is "what are they thinking?" followed by abject disgust for anyone involved in the project.
WTF? Turn in your (wo)man card. Like an overpowered sports car or a gun that shoots through schools, the outrageously excessive badassery of this thing has an appeal all its own.
For every smoking clanking roaring polluting autonomous quadruped you refuse to build, I'm going to build two.
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...and in ways that aren't to your advantage.
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Loud? It's an engineering prototype. The idea is to get it running first, then worry about the non-essential stuff like mufflers, armor, weapons, storage racks, etc.
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Because what you think of as a "horse knee" isn't a horse's knee.
Google for an image of a horse skeleton, and compare its bones to your own. In another tab, google image for a horse. Look at where the joint between the humerus and radius bones is at (in humans that is the elbow), and what that point actually looks like on the horse. Do the same for the joint between the femur and tibia (a human knee).
Basically, what you think of as 'knees' in quadrupeds are equivalent to our wrists and ankles. What you con
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And now I'm imagining a horde of Goatse-inspired warbots charging the enemy ass first, making a drawn-out farting sound and attempting to entrap them in that gaping maw.
Thanks.
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The knees all face forward, which is the same as most animals I know of. The knees on a horse all face forward too. Here's an image:
http://www.horses-healthy-balance.com/1_31_3_patella-problems-in-horses-and-dogs.html [horses-hea...alance.com]
Same goes for cats. You're probably confusing the horse's ankle/heel with its knee. On animals like horses and cats, there is no "heel" like on a human; that part on the rear leg is raised far off the ground, and only their toes (or toe, in the case of a horse) actually rest on the ground.
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I've seen that exact scene in several movies and tv shows. Apparently there are people that dumb out there. They're called "scriptwriters".
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You must be new here.