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bonniegrrl
The robotic ground squirrel could be programmed to heat its tail or not, giving the researchers a chance to see how the rattlesnakes changed their response to hot versus cool tails.
The experiment was contingent on fooling the rattlesnakes into believing the biorobotic squirrel was real. "We used an actual squirrel taxidermy model ...so the exterior is a real squirrel. Then we stuffed the squirrel with components in order to get the squirrel to move the way we wanted it to move," says one of the robo-squirrel's designers, Sanjay Joshi, a professor in the department of mechanical and aeronautical engineering at the University of California, Davis. The biorobotic squirrel was also stored in real squirrel-bedding so that it would smell like a real squirrel. Key to making this robot, and any robot that is designed to interact with another (living) species, is figuring out "what makes a robotic animal believable to another animal," Joshi says.
Read the full article here:
Squirrels Ward Off Snakes With Hot Tails
