Tag: ANIMALS

Share Negligent dog owners, take note: you can now ignore your best friend's pleas for attention guilt-free, thanks to a new device that keeps tabs on your dog's most critical needs. Dog-e-Minder, the latest electronic bauble to add to your dog's collar, is a battery-powered gadget that keeps track of the last time old Fido ate, walked, or took the Paxil he'll undoubtedly need after the ...

After lobbying the University of Georgia to replace its lovable bulldog mascot with a robo-dog, PETA has now set its sights on loftier, more high-profile mammals -- namely, one Punxsutawney Phil. The prognosticating Pennsylvania groundhog, who puts the entire nation on pins and needles in anticipation of his annual unscientific weather forecast, may soon be replaced by a robotic rendition of ...

If elephants are the Jackson Pollocks of the Animal Kingdom, then orangutans may be the new Ansel Adams of the jungle... or the drunk, trigger-happy sorority girl. Nonja, an orangutan at the Vienna Zoo, now has her own Facebook page dedicated to the photos she takes herself with a digital camera. Armed with a Samsung ST 1000, all the 33-year-old Nonja has to do is click and whatever her eye ...

When an Israeli family recently left their vacuuming robot to tidy up, they received more than just a clean house. According to Bot Junkie, Efi Frida found a deadly viper wrapped around the brushes of the Roomba 560 that she and her husband had purchased to help with household chores. The startling discovery happened when Frida returned home to find the robot angrily beeping and getting stuck. ...

The Free World has barely had a week to recover from the earth-shattering death of Uga, the lovable bulldog mascot for the University of Georgia, but People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has wasted no time in recommending a replacement. The nomination? A robot. As reported by WGAU 1340AM in Athens, Georgia, PETA thinks that the next Uga should either be some sort of "animatronic" ...

What's the story, Missouri? All the rest of the states enjoy technology. We surf on the Facebook, and send the textings, and play 'The World of the Warcraft,' and so forth. And you know what? We have fun with it. But you -- you, Missouri -- you have to go and pee on our parade, don't you? You have to take technology and make it evil. Well, Mizzou, we've had enough. We don't know what's more ...

Every now and then, something will randomly fall out of the sky into an extremely insular environment, and chaos and confusion will erupt. Those consequences, as Chicken Little will tell you, can be devastating. Something along those lines recently happened at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) when a bird dropped a baguette on the giant particle accelerator as it was flying overhead, nearly ...

When you adopt a dog, you expect to drop some cash on things like food, visits to the vet, and maybe chew toys. But one man's best friend drained his bank account in an unexpected way. According to Kotaku, a man named Greg says his one-year-old dog, Oscar, purchased 5,000 points on his Xbox Live account, totaling $62.50, while the owner slept in the next room. Somehow, the lab/hound mix ...

The world of robotics is awash in nature-inspired cybernetic creatures -- bees, spiders, fish. But none have been so creepy as the DASH, or the Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod. For those keeping score, that's a fancy way of saying "robotic cockroach." The DASH was built by a team at the University of California Berkeley and mimics nature's nastiest little survivor in almost every way. Its ...

Last Friday, sheriff's deputies in Scott County, Mississippi began hearing reports of two escaped emus terrorizing (okay, maybe not terrorizing) the area around the small city of Forest. Unable to find the flightless felons, deputies continued to field calls over the weekend, until finally this past Sunday, they located one of the winged renegades where it was weaving through traffic on ...

Some new faces are set to hit Facebook and Twitter, and they're not your average social network users, either. With hopes that folks will go 'bananas' over the idea, the Uganda Wildlife Authority created Facebook and Twitter accounts for some of the mountain gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. According to USA Today, animal lovers around the world can visit FriendAGorilla.org, or ...

Last week, in an epic showdown between nature and technology, science barely edged out Mother Earth to claim global supremacy. And, reportedly, it only took a lonely carrier pigeon in South Africa two hours to even the odds. According to BBC reports, an exasperated employee for Durban's Unlimited IT spurred the pigeon to action after the man frustratingly mentioned that data transmission ...

The 36th annual Siggraph conference, which celebrates "computer graphics and interactive techniques," hit New Orleans last week with exhibits ranging from animation workshops to displays of 'emerging technologies' like the Pull-Navi ear-navigator. One of the more intriguing exhibits, presented by Texas A&M University's (A&M) visualization department, featured a "deep immersion," ...

While Kim Jong-il continues to lead North Korea like a hyperactive preschooler whose parents can't find his Ritalin, South Korea is knocking off designer handbags, churning out electronics like nobody's business, and now, according to USA Today, using cloned, drug-sniffing dogs to patrol its airports. Unlike the U.S. (where German Shepherds get to sniff all the drugs), South Korea has put six ...

What's good for the goose is good for the... well, everyone. When a two-week-old gosling with a broken leg was brought into Tiggywinkles (yes, we are serious) Animal Hospital in Buckinghamshire, England, the attending veterinarians couldn't bring themselves to euthanize her. Instead, they decided to outfit the goose with a bionic leg -- a first for geese according to the Telegraph (though ...