Now I’m no PETA member, and I consider a nice lamb chop to be one of life’s great pleasures, but even I get uncomfortable watching this robot do its thing to a racked-up sheep.
Despite how unsettling this contraption is, the inventor, James Trevely, claims that the sheep don’t mind it all that much. In fact, he says that the sheep often fell asleep mid-shear, which I find hard to believe. Even harder to believe? That according to physiological stress tests, copulation is the most stressful activity for sheep to withstand. You sheep need to work on your self-confidence.
[Shear Magic via BotJunkie]
Alex
May 5, 2009 at 10:06 AM
Way tooo slooooowww!
Report PermalinkGiles Wilson
May 5, 2009 at 2:48 PM
Actually, it’s James Trevelyan, based at the University of Western Australia. As an aside, the key to this system is the ‘ET’ (elephant trunk) wrist on the shearing head that provides the flexibility to shear an animal.
Report Permalinksaeble
May 5, 2009 at 9:23 PM
Uhm… mate… trust me, that sheep just had probably the best shear of its life, the human equivalent of the $150 worth of chic salon sort of experience. Normally a sheep off shears is covered stem to stern in little nicks and cuts and its over in about 2 minutes depending on the shearer. Far as I can see, that sheep had no cuts at all. Shearers are not known for their courtesy, manners and pleasant patter. The are in no way gentle, not generally abusive but certainly man handled.
No doubt that will help a lot with the Peta-philes. If they could get this thing up to a decent rate of knots and make it easy to get the blighters into the cuffs in the first place, it would be pretty good.
Report PermalinkBob
May 6, 2009 at 12:47 AM
@ Alex, you beat me to it mate. Waaaaay too slow. Looks pretty old though (?).
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