The robot polar bears are part of the zoo’s holiday exhibit, and it’s unclear if they’ll be around after the season is over. Let’s face it, though. These would have to be some damn good robot bears to convince me to see them over live polar bears.

PETA is encouraging the zoo to keep developing the animatronic animals, but listen PETA, hear me out. Sure, you’re trying to keep animals out of captivity. You’re also promoting the creation of an advanced, highly mobile robot bear army.

I encourage you to rethink your position. [Inhabitots via Inhabitat]

Researchers have now found a way to paralyse tiny worms when they expose them to ultraviolet light. Even when the ultraviolet light was turned off the animals stayed stunned. However, if they were subsequently exposed to a different form of light they recovered again and were able to move.

The researchers claim that this is the first time that such an effect has been demonstrated in an animal. Although some of the worms died, most of them lived through the process.

The effect is caused by using a molecule which changes its shape when exposed to ultraviolet light.

Well, it’s a start I suppose. [Telegraph via The Daily What]

Tony Hawk Ride comes with a skateboard controller. You know what that means: dogs playing video games. What’s amazing about this video is just how good this dog is. Impressive!

[YouTube]

Sometimes the best apps are the simplest, and CatPaint is nothing if not simple. Cats can be added to pre-existing photos or cat-scarce shots from the iPhone’s camera, and either saved to your camera roll or sent via email. Using it takes a while to get used to: Once you’ve selected a cat from the app’s animal palette and set the slider for size, each tap on the photo instantly splashes a new cat at the point of contact, which can’t be edited, save for a temperamental shake-to-delete function. But seriously, not the point:

See?!? $1.19. [iTunes via Macworld]

This is Janet’s Whizbang Chicken Plucker, built using the instructions from the hit best-selling book Anyone Can Build a Tub-Style Mechanical Chicken Plucker. It is absolutely f—king horrifying, and I apologise in advance.

[Eat Me Daily via Kottke]

National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen was in Antarctica to capture shots of leopard seals. One approached him, jaws wide and ready for biting… and if you haven’t heard the rest of the story yet, you need to watch this brief clip.

I’m not man enough to dive into freezing waters to document the lives of animals that could rip off my head without a second thought, but I’m sure glad that YouTube exists so I can sit here in my underwear and enjoy the experience vicariously.

That’s what NASA is planning to do: use squirrel monkeys to test the possible effect of radiation in humans for long-term space missions. This is the first time the agency is going to test with monkeys since the days of the Mercury Project.

They plan to bomb 27 squirrel monkeys with high-energy gamma-ray radiation, the equivalent of what astronauts could get in a three-year voyage. This obviously can result in two things: monkeys dying in pain or giant green monkeys destroying the whole East Coast.

Clearly, a lose-lose situation.

The $US1.75 million project has encountered strong opposition from animal welfare organisations, but NASA spokesman Bill Jeffs gives a good argument:

NASA-funded research has shown that simulated space radiation can affect nerve cells in culture and also the behaviour of mice and rats, but these studies are limited in the extent they can be extrapolated to human behaviour and performance. Studies in nonhuman primates are essential to be able to best predict neurobehavioral effects of radiation on humans.

Would you prefer 27 squirrel monkeys dying in experiments or six dead astronauts in a capsule floating on the Pacific Ocean? [Space.com]

I don’t know how the fluffy creatures lost their most precious parts in the first place, but scientists decided to grow entire penises from scratch and implant them into a group of rabbits. The results were fully functional, completely responsive sex organs in all the rabbits and “when given the chance to have sex, eight [of them] were able to ejaculate, and four became fathers”. Impressive conception rate considering they were working with brand new equipment.

The hope is to one day reproduce those results for humans and aid those requiring penile reconstruction. Until then though, I suppose that “replacement penis” will keep implying the involvement of batteries. [Wired]

Miss Baillie’s invention solves one of the biggest problems in veterinary medicine. That is, once your hand is up a cow’s butt you can’t really see anything you’re doing. Now with robotic organs and a monitor, she can teach students exactly what they should (and definitely should not) be grabbing.

On a related note, Miss Baillie claims she is also working on a ‘Haptic Horse’. Kent Smith may well have some ideas for her, as evidenced by this September’s Photoshop Contest entry:

If you’d like to be put in touch, Miss Baille, please let me know. [Wired]

My perspective is that nature always beats technology. Waves eat ships, roaches beat Mortein and earthquakes topple buildings. Every day, this conflict plays itself out in front of my eyes as Malcolm the puppy gnaws on gadgets.

I’ve had Malcolm for a year now. He’s a little dog. He’s a good boy although kind of a moron, but Lisa and I love him. As a puppy, he chewed on a good variety of things (as puppies do). Pens probably reminded him of bones; he would jump onto Lisa’s chair to grab a pen from her desk and prance away with his prize, crunching away to get at the inky marrow. He’d attack shoelaces with such fervour you’d think they were spaghetti with meat sauce. Glasses, too. He liked biting up the ear pieces so they would be jagged and painful to wear. But now that he’s a bit older, he’s developed a primary affinity for eating gadgets.

TV remotes are fun for him, but only rectangular ones and mostly on the corners. The Toshiba remote has a little bit of chew on the corners, but the AppleTV remote, made of that soft chicklet-looking plastic, is his favourite. If I leave it on the coffee table, I will find it under a couch cushion two days later looking more worn. The black IR cap has broken off and the battery case has popped out. I’m lucky he didn’t swallow the batteries. One time he even chewed through a 110V cable for a heating pad. I’d only unplugged it that morning!

Malcolm’s favourite thing to chew on is an animatronic lion cub. Someone sent it to me last year, unsolicited, and it turned into a dog toy. It’s basically a little robot cub that growls and moves its eyes and mouth. The size of a teddy bear. Malcolm used to be scared of it, but now he just unleashes all the hell a 4kg dog can on it. I think he hates it. After all he’s a flesh and blood dog, and the lion is a robotic cat. Not only is the conflict inter-species, but its a battle between a biological being and a robotic one.

At first, he’d drag it across the floor by its limbs. After awhile he learned to grab it by the nape of the neck and shake it. After two months, the neck opened up as did the plastic spine which is surrounded by various cables that power the mouth and eye servos. He chewed through them and killed the robot. Sometimes he humps it, but its clearly dominance not cross-species homosexual technophilia. I think.

I don’t have a point here. I just find it amusing and fun to watch nature’s greatest machines destroy the primitive man-made replicas. Man, do we have a long way to go.

*Yes, I spray things down with bitter apple now.