Why The Heck Is This Guy Using A Sheep As A Dialysis Machine?

PETA and PETA loving people, chill. It’s not real. Well, the animals could be real but the sheep isn’t really being used as a dialysis machine. Okay. The man and sheep setup is actually part of an art piece by Revital Cohen called ‘Life Support’. It’s examines whether we could use animals as medical devices.

It’s a fun idea to twirl around your head and takes things a few step farther than a blind man using a guide dog. In the image of the sheep dialysis machine, a sheep’s kidneys are used by someone suffering from kidney failure. They connect the patient’s vein to the sheep, pump out the waste from the patient’s body and uses the sheep’s kidney to clean it before returning it back to the patient. Obviously the science behind the art is only conceptual, but the question is raised: could we become parasites and live off another organisms bodily functions? [Revital Cohen via Co.design]

In this image, a girl is using a greyhound to act as her respiratory device.

Another image of man plugged into sheep.