Stories tagged monkeys
Oh, good. Cyborg monkeys.
in Life Science, Scientific Enterprise, and Biological Populations Change Over Time
The scariest of robots: And how do I know there's a monkey brain inside? Look how angry it is.
Courtesy litmuseOh, you’re probably the same way—how often do you find yourself thinking, “I wish monkeys were more terrifying. Sure, they’re all fanged little were-men, with hand-feet and clever brains, but there must be some way that they could be worse.”
Pretty often, huh?
And, when you watch the news, don’t you constantly find yourself musing, “Hmm. The future is looking a little too bright.”
Well, don’t worry, Buzzketeers. The future promises to be just as dark and bewildering as ever, and horrifying cyber-apes are part of it.
“Now, JGordon, it can’t be that bad.”
Hey! Don’t sound so disappointed; it is that bad. Skeptical? Check it out for yourself—Sciencemen and Techladies have trained two macaque monkeys to control huge robotic arms…using their monkey brains!
Macaques have shown their evil little faces on Science Buzz before (murderous enthusiasm and enthusiastic murder), and I don’t think a refresher on robots is at all necessary—because there’s no escaping them.
Robotic limbs are becoming kind of a big deal these days, but even the most advanced of them rely on nerves remaining in a partial limb, or another part of the body entirely; which muscles to activate for a certain function must be relearned, or an operation like gripping with a robotic hand can be linked to a movement like shrugging the shoulders. It’s tricky to do, and it pushes the brain’s flexibility, especially considering that the only feedback the limb gives might be a hot or poking sensation at the connection point (this in place of a real limb’s feedback, like the pressure, friction, or warmth one might feel through their hands or feet).
Wiring a prosthetic (or any robotic device) directly into the brain—as was the case with these monkeys and their robot arms—overcomes some of the problems with existing prosthetic technology, while adding some new challenges.
With electrodes implanted right into the brain, relearning limb function can come much more quickly and naturally (awful little monkeys can do it, after all). A little too quickly, actually—a monkey at Duke University was similarly wired up this winter to make a robot in Japan walk, and the robotic body actually received the signals to walk before the monkey’s actual body did. Limbs wired the same way could be too fast or powerful for the brain to initially cope with. You might, say, run into a wall before your brain has time to create another route for your robo-legs; the speed of the limb action would be faster than the speed of thought.
However, if the prosthetics operated with a “closed neural loop,” that is to say if they could be made to provide natural feedback to the brain (like heat, pressure, strain, etc), scientists think that the brain could adapt much more quickly, and could even learn whole new pathways of motion. So a person wired up in the right way might be able to control a plane, or a nanosized robot directly with their mind. And it wouldn’t be something where you would think about walking forward and the plane would fly forward—you would learn the plane’s movements of flying, feel the flying, and control it as if you were the plane. That sort of things is still a long way off, and unless new technology is invented to sense and input to the brain in another way, it would require having a bunch of electrodes stuck through your skull and into your neurons.
This, of course, is all scientific blah be de blah, and if distracts from the real issue behind the story: cyborg monkeys. Do you know what the monkeys were actually taught to do with their metal limbs? Feed themselves. How horrible. Why not just teach them how to operate guns with their minds, or remove human brains through our nasal passageways?
In time, that too will come to pass. Look forward to it.
Tags : Monkey math: Bonzo doesn't find numbers boring or intimdating
We've had our share of controversial math posts here on the Buzz lately. But here's news that rhesus macaques are quicker than humans at doing computer-based math. They must not find it boring like many members of the homo sapien species. And we've documented in the past that chimps have better memories than most people.
Sizing up the competition: Capuchin monkeys can be trained to use money, and react to it in surprisingly humanlike ways.
Courtesy Arriving at the horizon
Researchers in Italy have taught capuchin monkeys how to use money to buy food in lab experiments. The monkeys were observed making simple economic decisions.
The study is not yet available on-line, but it sounds an awful lot like this research from Yale, published last year. There, the monkeys not only learned to use money, but to respond to price fluctuations, and even to steal. However, they could not budget and they gambled irrationally – a lot like their hominid cousins.
There was also an incident of flinging feces at fellow monkeys who did not play by the rules – perhaps the most dismal experiment in the history of the dismal science.
Gone fishin': A long-tailed macaque in Thailand demonstrates its unorthodox technique.
Courtesy nittynorn
Meanwhile in Indonesia, industrious long-tailed macaque monkeys aren't waiting for handouts. They are supporting themselves by observed fishing, scooping fish from the water with their bare hands and eating them.
This is the first documented evidence of fishing in this species, though other primates – including baboons, chimps and orangutans – are known to fish. Researchers believe this behavior in macaques is an indication of their flexibility and ability to adapt to new conditions.
In light of our current poll I thought this article about monkeys performing mental addition to be interesting...
A Rhesus monkey: Full of hate, a monkey's most powerful emotion. (phot courtesy of OskarN on flickr.com)A week ago Sunday, the Deputy Mayor of New Delhi, India, died as a result of being attacked by monkeys.
Deputy Mayor S.S. Bajwa was attacked by Rhesus Macaque monkeys on the balcony of his own home. Overwhelmed by the monkey pack, Bajwa fell from the balcony, and sustained severe head injuries upon impact with the ground.
Rhesus Macaques generally live in “troops” of about 20 individuals (a group this size is technically referred to as “pretty scary”), but troops have been known to be as large as 180 individuals (technically “super scary”). In addition to small but thriving colonies in Florida and South Carolina Rhesus monkeys can be found across southern Asia from Afghanistan to China. They are particularly populous in cities like New Delhi, where they have overrun many public buildings and neighborhoods. Coincidentally, these locations have recently been added to my list of places I don’t want to live: Florida; South Carolina; New Delhi all of southern Asia.
Part of the problem in New Delhi is that some devout Hindus consider the Macaques to be manifestations of the monkey god Hanuman, and encourage their occupation of public places by feeding them peanuts and bananas. Unafraid of humans, even Deputy Mayors, the Macaques will sometimes bite or steal food from people.
Rhesus Macaques are also extensively used as biological and medical test subjects, leading some (me) to theorize that this may have been a misguided revenge killing. What’s more, Macaques have accumulated significant space travel experience (NASA launched a bunch in the 50s and 60s, and Russia sent one into space as recently as 1997), and have even had their genes spliced with those of a jellyfish, making them powerful and unpredictable potential foes to humanity.
In an effort to deal with the Rhesus situation, Delhi authorities have employed monkey catchers who use langurs, “a larger and fiercer kind of monkey,” to scare away or catch the Macaques. Nothing stops a dangerous monkey problem like “larger and fiercer” monkeys.
Speaking of deadly arms races, last week was also the 45th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis. Will humanity never learn?
One of my responsibilities at the Science Museum is to collect the paper questions visitors submit to our featured Scientists on the Spot. Sometimes the questions don’t quite mesh with the featured scientist’s background, but are good questions anyway, or are entertaining, or fun, and I thought this would be a good forum to answer some of the questions that would otherwise go unanswered. So, here we go!
Q: How many people are there in the world?
A: According to the World Population Clock from the United States Census Bureau, as of 3:30pm on June 2, 2006 there are approximately 6,519,746,485 people in the world. This number is constantly increasing, so for the most current number, you should visit the link above.
Q: How many bones are there in the human body?
A: The adult human skeleton has 206 bones, but they don't all start out as single bones. Even long bones (like your femur) start out with the epiphyses separate from the main shaft, and these unify with time. There are 800 centers of ossification in the skeleton that unite with age, and as such, the number of bony elements in a subadult can vary greatly.
Q: What is a spider monkey?
A: From the Wikipedia entry on spider monkeys:
Spider monkeys are New World monkeys of the family Atelidae, subfamily Atelinae. Found in tropical forests from southern Mexico to Brazil, spider monkeys belong to the genus Ateles; the closely related woolly spider monkeys, are in the genus Brachyteles.
Here’s a picture of one kind of spider monkey.
Spider Monkey: Image courtesy dgphilli.
Q: How long does it take to digest gum?
A: My parents always told me not to swallow my gum because it would take seven years for it to be digested. That’s just not true. Chewing gum has five basic ingredients - sweeteners, corn syrup, softeners, flavors and gum base. The first four ingredients are soluble, meaning they dissolve in your mouth as you chew or in your stomach when you swallow. Gum base doesn't dissolve – it just passes through us with the rest of our waste a day or two after you swallow it.
Q: How old do you have to be to donate blood or anything else? Can you be under 18?
A: Well, if you are deceased and a minor the decision to donate you organs is made by your parents or legal guardians. Licensed drivers can make a personal commitment to organ and tissue donation by indicating their wish to donate on their driver's license application. This lets families and emergency personnel know your wishes. Donation information is available in all driver's license bureaus in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. In these states, if you indicate your wish to become a donor on your driver's license, it is legally binding. Parental authorization is required for individuals under the age of 18.
To give blood for the Red Cross, you must be at least 17 years old. For more information visit the American Red Cross blood donation site.
Q: What are nails made of?
A: I am going to assume the question is regarding finger or toe nails. Fingernails and toenails are made of a protein called keratin. Keratin is the major protein component of hair, wool, nails, horns, hoofs, and the quills of feathers.
Q: Do you like bubble gum?
A: Not really. My favorite gum when I was a kid was Big League Chew. Now I prefer Swedish Fish.
That’s all for now. Do you have any odds and ends questions you’d like us to try to answer? Leave them for us – we’ll try our best to answer them for you.
In recent weeks, scientists have announced the discovery of not one, but two new mammals species:
- A squirrel-like rodent was found in a marketplace in Laos
- a new species of monkey was discovered in Africa, the first such discovery there in over 20 years.
Scientists describe new species all the time. But usually they're really small, like insects, or live in hard-to-reach places, like under water. New mammals are rare. These two species both come from remote jungle regions, and are shy, timid creatures that avoid humans.
Interestingly, both species were well-known to local people. So these species aren't really "new" — they're just "new to science."
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