Hasta La Gadget!

Does Sasquatch (or Sasquatches) really exist? That question has been hotly debated by the scientific community for decades. But now, one Idaho State University cryptozoological team is hoping to finally provide a definitive answer—using this autonomous blimp outfitted with NASA-quality photographic equipment.

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Whether they run, jump or swim, there are plenty of robots around to be fearful of. None have quite exacerbated our arachnophobia as much as Robugtix’s T8 octopod, however. The 3D-printed spiderbot not only looks the part, but employs 26 servo motors to drive its unnervingly life-like movement. Bigfoot’s baked-in “Inverse Kinematics Engine” deals with all of the background computations, so you don’t have to be a coding genius to work it. Instead, users send “short and simple commands” to the bot via wireless XBee or any other method you can hook up to its Rx / Tx pins. Expected to ship at the end of September, the T8 is available now for a special pre-order price of $1,350, and you can add $85 to that if you want one of Robugtix’s analog-stick controllers for real-time direction. If that sounds a bit pricey, there’s another option in the much cuter $250 iitsii hexapod, which is predicted to ship late August. Check out the shudder-inducing video of the T8 below, then follow it up with the iitsii demo to help you forget.

Filed under: Robots

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Source: Robugtix

Last November, a group of scientists claimed that they had discovered DNA evidence of the existence of the fabled Bigfoot. The scientists promised that they would be publishing a paper outlining their findings and if you’ve been wondering where exactly that paper is, that mystery is now solved. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the scientists had a difficult time finding a publication that would actually publish their findings.

According to Ars Technica, the researchers ended up having to purchase their own online journal to be able to publish their findings. You can download the research paper yourself if you feel like coughing up $30 for what apparently are rather questionable results. While the researchers claim that their DNA evidence proves the existence of Bigfoot, the results seemed off to Ars Technica.

Ars’ John Timmer has a background in biological research and looked over the results and came away feeling like the results have significant issues. He says that where the nuclear genome is concerned “the results are a mess.” He points out that sometimes the tests picked up human DNA and other times human DNA wasn’t found. He also notes that sometimes the tests failed altogether. He also points out test results that show patches of double and single stranded DNA intermixed. Timmer says all this suggests is that the researchers have are samples of modern human DNA intermingled with some other contaminant.

So yet again, Sasquatch continues to elude us.

[via Ars Technica]

If you ever watched the 80s flick Harry and the Hendersons, you may wondered if Bigfoot could actually exist. I can’t say one way or another if the mythical Sasquatch is a living creature or nothing more than a figment of the imagination. A group of scientists from claim to have concluded a five-year DNA study that is under peer review and confirmed the existence of Bigfoot.

According to the scientists, they have been able to sequence 20 whole mitochondrial genomes and have used next-generation sequencing to obtain three whole nuclear genomes from samples claimed to be from a Sasquatch. The scientists say that DNA evidence suggests that Bigfoot is a human relative.

The scientists claim that the creature known as Bigfoot came to be approximately 15,000 years ago as a hybrid crossbreed of modern Homo sapiens and an unknown primate species. The scientists state that data indicates the Sasquatch was the result of males from an unknown hominin species crossing with female Homo sapiens.

Read more about the scientists’ study in their press release here.

This story should serve as a warning to all the fun-loving pranksters out there. While I have nothing against pranks, I do think it’s not a very wise thing to take things too far.

Image credit: U.S. Army Materiel Command; Associated Press

The image above is actually of a soldier in a Ghillie suit. While some think that the suits make people look like Bigfoot, I certainly don’t, but maybe that opinion might change when it’s dark out.

Anyway, a Montana jokester named Randy Lee Tenley donned a Ghillie suit recently so he can scare up some people by pretending to be Bigfoot. He allegedly darted out into the middle of the road (while roaring, I bet) – but his prank went horribly wrong when two cars hit him in the darkness of the night.

Montana Highway Patrol Lt. Col. Butch Huseby told the Los Angeles Times: “What we know so far is that we had a couple of guys out, allegedly trying to prompt a sighting of Bigfoot. This is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. Really.”

The incident is still under investigation though. And while our sympathies go out to Tenley’s family, let’s hope future pranksters will take this as a warning sign and not take the jokes too far.

[via LA Times]