Posted by: TeeJay Small | issued
In a move that combines two of Michael Crichton’s greatest works, scientists release robotic dinosaurs into the wild for experimental purposes. The move sounds like it was lifted straight from the opening act of a slasher movie, but it was done as a way to demonstrate dinosaur hunting techniques that support long-standing theories about fossil patterns. A video of the giant robot dinosaur has been shared on YouTube, in which the giant creature can be seen surprising an unsuspecting grasshopper with its powerful flaps.
Fortunately, the robot dinosaurs in question are large and rather unwieldy, so humans living near so-called hunting grounds need not fear putting their lives in danger. Jurassic Park and westworld In the near future.
Scientists experimented on robot dinosaurs to find out why some dinosaurs had wings long before evolution allowed them to fly.
The dinosaur, which scientists recreated using robotic parts, belongs to the Penaraputra tribe, a prehistoric group of raptor-like birds with claws protruding from their wings. Researchers have long been puzzled by the use of these feathered wings, which adorn modern birds to this day.
To finally address concerns about Pennaraputra’s use of wings, a team of engineers from Seoul National University in South Korea created a robotic dinosaur with specifications as close as possible to the real thing to reproduce the creature’s behavior. did. In nature.
This allowed the researchers to confirm that the wings were primarily used to glide short distances after jumping from trees or other high places, and did not provide full flight capabilities.
This has long been a theory supported by scientists due to the presence of fossils that show feathered wings that are rarely strong enough to lift certain genus Penaraputra off the ground. However, this robotic dinosaur has provided further insight into the hunting patterns of the Penaraputra species, which researchers now believe was eaten in a similar way to modern-day roadrunners.
Flash Pursuit Forging
Roadrunners, and possibly penalaputra, hunt by a method called flash-tracking foraging, in which they flap their wings with enough force to scare prey from high and low hiding places.
For this reason, the video of a dinosaur robot scaring a grasshopper is very important to demonstrate this hunting strategy. Of course, a giant obsidian structure on wheels does little to support this fact. This is because large creatures that move in this way are likely to drive the grasshoppers towards the hills.
Still, a study conducted by a research team at Seoul National University showed that 93% of locusts responded to the flapping of their primitive wings, and only 47% escaped with their wings still.
Further solidifying this data, the research appears to show that if a robot dinosaur had white spots on its wings or flaps on its tail, grasshoppers were far more likely to flee. .
As scientists continue to scour the prehistoric record for data on dinosaur bone structure, engineers are pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the modern technological environment, enabling further advances for this species. . By this time next year, we might have our own robot dinosaur sanctuary. The evacuation is completed each year when the Lawbrex bursts out of its nest and into the waiting crowd.
sauce: Nature