The Strandbeest began as an art project of Dutch artist Theo Jansen in the 1980s. Today, amateur Strandbeest enthusiasts are building their own walking beasts and putting some unique spins on the idea of a wind- or gravity-propelled walking sculpture. I-Wei Huang, an artist and tinkerer, has come up with what might be the cutest version yet: a hamster-propelled Strandbeest.

After receiving a mini Strandbeest kit from Gakken Magazine, Huang set out to create a unique propulsion system for the little plastic critter. He though about steam, but realizing that plastic and steam don’t exactly get along well, he scrapped that idea for a far more adorable one.

Huang modified the small Strandbeest to include a hamster ball on top. He hoped that, as the hamster ran inside the ball, its weight and movement would be strong enough to propel the machine along. He added some cogs and a chain that would activate the Strandbeest’s legs and move it forward with the hamster’s movement.

The artist didn’t have a pet hamster himself and wasn’t interested in keeping one as a pet, so he borrowed a hamster named Princess to test drive his contraption. It clearly worked very well, and it made for an oddly beautiful vision: a tiny animal running quickly while the mecha-legs below seemed to creep along slowly. In any case, Princess the hamster got to feel large and powerful for a few minutes while running right past a seemingly disinterested cat.

The post Hamster Powered Walker Ushers in Era of Rodent Rule first appeared on Gajitz.

For many years, we humans have assumed that only “higher” primates could feel and express empathy. But a new experiment from the University of Chicago suggests that even rats feel the tug of kinship when they see a friend in trouble. The experiment centered on separating two rat “friends” who usually share a cage by locking one up in a small chamber. The other rat had the power to open the chamber and let the detainee out – and it surprisingly did so even when there was no reward involved.

The scientists tried a number of setups to identify exactly what was motivating the free rats to let their friends out of the restraint chamber. They removed any type of reward, including socialization with the other rat; they put empty restraint chambers in the cage to see if the rats were opening it just because they were curious about it. They even gave the free rat the choice between eating chocolate alone and freeing its friend. More than half of the time, the rat chose to open the restraint chamber and share the chocolate with its friend, suggesting the first real signs of rodent empathy and social behavior.

The rats weren’t trained before beginning the experiment, but they quickly learned several ways to open the restraint chamber door. In the initial runs of the experiment, both the free and restrained rats were startled by the opening door. In subsequent runs, they clearly knew how to achieve the result and did it on purpose. They seemed to understand exactly how to help their trapped friends and performed complex actions to do so, over and over.

The post Warm Rodents? Rats Free Friends Rather Than Snack Alone first appeared on Gajitz.