A neat documentary I found discussing the growing field of nonhuman animal prosthetics. (youtube.com)
submitted 2017-02-04 10:11:34 by AmoreBestia Pro-zoophile, non-zoophile.
zoo_away 2 points on 2017-02-04 12:10:03

please be about implanting tails in humans... please... oh.

ok. that's neat, too.

WarCanine Love knows no boundaries between species or gender 1 point on 2017-02-04 21:07:09

Ah yes, fake tails for humans is more important than giving an animal a chance to walk and live a good life.

OS2Oslov Deer Zoo (non-active) 7 points on 2017-02-05 00:05:15

He was just trying to be funny, you know... maybe it missed the mark a bit, but a little slack here might go a long ways.

zoo_away 3 points on 2017-02-05 04:32:28

why not both? relax a little.

tencendur_ Neeeigh 3 points on 2017-02-04 20:59:44

What we really need is more advanced prothesis and techniques for treating damaged equine limbs. A damaged leg is a very very very bad thing.

30-30 amator equae 4 points on 2017-02-04 22:53:25

The title picture of this reminds me of the Battlestar Galactica movies from the 70s. I remember freaking out when I first saw Galactica´s version of a biomech dog.

Yet, we´re just at the start of the biomech revolution, prosthetics are barely more than simple mechanical tools. If we´d stop funding research on how to efficiently kill each other and start funding research on fully functional biomech prosthetics, no animal would need to suffer from the loss of a limb anymore.Not even a human.

I´m a huge fan of cyborgs, biomechs and transhumanism. If there´s any development that possibly helps us zoos with gaining more tolerance, then this might be the one we are looking for. We zoos are usually busy with trying to alter the status of animals from "meatbag driven solely by instincts" to " a being with an equal amount of individuality, sould and emotions as a human". But what if a new development like advanced prosthetics questions humanity? What if being a human isn´t such a no-brainer anymore? How many prosthetics can you have without losing your human status? As a fan of the Deus Ex series, this reminds me of the "Mechanical apartheid" trailer, absolutely worth watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-MU5MgRV6U

Did you see the leg prosthetics? I´d waste no time to get some of those (of course with full equine characteristics and features). I believe that technical development in the near future will force mankind to rethink itself in entirety...and maybe a small window will open up for us zoos, too. I really wonder what types of prosthetics we will see in 10, 20,or 30 years... Just imagine equipping your animal with a voice chip, translating the animal´s emotions into human language...your quadruped partner can actually say what he/she wants, what he/she feels about the intimate relationship with you. If there´s anything that definitely will be able to break the ice, then it´s such a translator. Let´s all hope that researching biomech prosthetics for animals will some day lead to the inevitable invention of the UHAT, the universal human-animal translator.