Terminator Sparrows?

AstroPhilosopher writes "In a move not far removed from the model T-101, U.S. researchers have succeeded in re-animating a dead sparrow. Duke scientists were studying male behavior aggression among sparrows. They cleverly decided to insert miniaturized robotics into an empty sparrow carcass and operate it like a puppet (abstract). It worked; they noticed wing movements were a primary sign of aggression. Fortunately the living won out this time. The experiment stopped after the real sparrows tore off the robosparrow's head. But there's always a newer model on the assembly-line. Good luck sparrows." Bad Horse has not yet made a decision on the researchers' application.

Comments

I Don't Understand the Conclusion

[eldavojohn]

Awesome research but the last section puzzles me:

The living male birds were equally aggressive to Robosparrow whether its wing movements were activated or not, the researchers found.

"It confirmed our hypothesis that the wing-waving behaviour is functioning male aggressive communication," said Dr Anderson.

Wouldn't the first sentence imply that nothing can be determined? I mean, it sounds like they weren't beating the shit out of robosparrow because of his wing movements but more so because he was going around looking for Sparrow Connor.

But in all serious does anyone know how they came to that conclusion given the seemingly arbitrary constant aggression?

Re:I Don't Understand the Conclusion

[GameboyRMH]

It certainly looks like a pair of conflicting statements...did they never consider that they'd triggered an "Uncanny Valley" reaction in the sparrows and they were being aggressive towards the cyborg-zombie sparrow?

Re:I Don't Understand the Conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah... if this were to happen with humans, I could see that just about anyone would try to take down a random robo-zombie with a baseball bat or shotgun blast to the head!

There's not going to be any "Oh hey... are you okay, man? You look pale, and your eyes are dull and you move with an unnatural jerky movement... did you eat some bad shellfish?"

It's going to be screaming and mayhem.

BEST CAPTCHA EVER: "automata"

Re:I Don't Understand the Conclusion

[Grayhand]

It certainly looks like a pair of conflicting statements...did they never consider that they'd triggered an "Uncanny Valley" reaction in the sparrows and they were being aggressive towards the cyborg-zombie sparrow?

That was my reaction. The attack seemed disproportionally aggressive. Killing the competition isn't a normal reaction. It seems more like fear than aggression. Curious if that could end up being another intelligence test whether animals also deal with a form of Uncanny Valley reaction. It's not universal since I've seen animals being fairly accepting of robotic animals. Gorillas don't normally have an aggressive reaction to people in gorilla suits, Rick Baker's crew dealt with that first hand on Graystoke by mixing with wild gorillas. Birds are different and look for subtle cues so they may react more strongly to "wrong" behavior. Moving oddly might be perceived as diseased so a dangerous threat to the gene pool.

Your seeds

[Hsien-Ko]

Give them to me.


Now

Re:Your seeds

[CanHasDIY]

I can't quite tell if you said that in the tyrant robotic bird in a swamp sense, the Monsanto legal team sense, or the "this experiment is so awesome that I demand the researchers' bukkake all over my body" sense.

More like the "reference to a classic sci-fi movie that probably came out before you were but a twinkle in your father's eye" sense.

This is good news

[Anonymous Coward]

Even sparrows hate the undead. Those zombies are going down.

But, was it...

[Anonymous Coward]

an African or European swallow?

Re:Jesus God

[GameboyRMH]

That's nothing. Consider this:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/medical-robots/ratbot-beats-on-live-rats-to-make-them-depressed

Harry Harlow would be proud.

"Eventually the head fell off"

[Anonymous Coward]

The researchers, as quoted in the original article, describe the problem I've always had with re-animation:

"Eventually the head fell off"

Ex-Parrot

[Marillion]

Repeat experiment with parrots and ruin a perfectly good Monty Python skit.

Hey AstroPhilosopher

[gtirloni]

Good job trying to make everybody think researchers actually revived a dead bird.

This "news" would be as amusing as a 5 year-old "re-animating" his sockpuppet with Lego.

"Hey, check this out!"

[sdeath]

"... We wrapped a robot in a dead sparrow and decided to see if we could fool the other sparrows into interacting with our creepy, ghoulish automaton! It's *science*!"

And of course, it was COMPLETELY UNEXPECTED that the grisly abomination stapled to a tree branch triggered aggressive reactions from the other sparrows. Because every living thing JUST LOVES to be confronted with a soulless golem wrapped in the dead flesh of another of its kind. And that never causes pants-shitting terror or anything.

I can see it now:

Sparrow 1: "OH MY GOD! IS THAT... *THING* ... WEARING FRANK'S FACE? IS IT?! FRANK??!?!"
Sparrow 2: "It's not him anymore. IT'S! ...NOT! ...HIM! IT'S A MACHINE! Help me destroy it! Be his egg-layer one last time!"
Sparrow 1: "*snf* OK... OK... oh God, Frank... God help me..."

Yup. Science.

Is there, like, a review board or anything? Maybe that could screen some horror flicks before writing checks for this kind of bullshit? "New rule: If your study is substantially similar to the plot of any one of this library of 100 horror movies, or if it has a plausible chance of producing similar outcomes, we're not going to fund it."

Re:O.O

[reverseengineer]

There's video of the sparrow in the supplementary information tab on the abstract page in Quicktime format. The file 265_2013_1478_MOESM2_ESM.m4v is the one with footage of the reanimated sparrow. I'll warn you that it isn't exactly thrilling. No lurid sparrow on cybersparrow violence.

Of note is that they actually operated the mechanical bird inside a cage. I think the quote "Eventually the head fell off and the wing stopped moving" from the BBC article meant precisely that: the robobird fell apart from exposure to the elements and repeated trials.

The /. submitter appears to have wrongly inferred that this damage was from other sparrows tearing it apart, when in fact their aggressive behavior was "got close and waved menacingly."