1w ago

Evolution: 🖕

236 comments

Don't hide it Japan, you're just doing this to make cat girls
- Why stop there? I want my dog and fox and wolf girls too
  
  How about horse girls?
  
  Won't someone think of the poor working class furries? A fur suit can already cost 10 or 20 grand. Now they're going to have to add cyborg body parts to the mix as well? Talk about gentrification!
- Also these ears will help to uh, absorb the echoes and extra noise of the world around you. Yeah.
  
  Wait, I ... could make human-cat hears that actually have microphones in them and that turn towards the gaze and they could actually ear out of them if they're wearing linked earphones ... could even do some psychoacoustic filtering to give some kind of "superearing" ability .... Then some cunt like Elon is going to just steal my idea... meh. .. eff it
- Looks more like Mecha-Godzilla, tho.
- So, uh, you reckon you could fit eight of those on one person?
  
  I think we can do just four
- They need to increase their birthrate somehow.
- taps fingers together rhythmically
  \ Good, gooood. It's all coming together.
- catgirl mecha, if we're being precise.
- Is it prehensile? This could lead to octopus-like abilities if you added more than one.
- This feels more like monkey nannas. An entirely more niche kink.
- contrary to popular beliefs real cat girls do exist in Japan. there is more information on the internet https://redlib.orangenet.cc/r/realscatgirls . unfortunately it's on reddit not on lemmy (yet).
  
  hehe fuck you
  
  who tf upvoted this
  
  Good shit

How about bionic ear appendages to combat hearing loss?
- Hearing aids?
  
  No, cat ears.
  
  Is that like a sexually transmitted ear infection?

I posted this comment on another thread:

My elation can't be measured.
- I have good news and bad news
  
  Ok. I just want the good news.

Both sysadmins and hentai enthusiasts rejoice!
- Did you really need to specify the same thing twice?
  
  Lol, actually, I was even thinking of specifically additionally naming elderly sysadmins and elderly hentai enthusiasts too ...

Imagine working in a retirement home and one day one of the residents tells you "I am taking part in this clinical trial" and then she comes back as Doctor fucking Octopus.
- Fuck. Yes. Id make so many comments about killing spider man.
- I just want a third arm, is that too much to ask? Imagine how many tasks would be easier with that.
  
  Say a prayer to the Four-Armed Emperor.

Is that photo AI? All the videos of the real prototype look substantially different.
https://youtu.be/vLwpMu_msW0
- At best it's concept art, tho that thin strap probably wouldn't serve the purpose they're looking for. At worst it's generated by clickbait article writers.
  How could they pass up an "electrified facehugger penis sheath" image like this?
  
  https://www.cnn.com/style/article/japan-robotic-tail-intl-hnk-trnd/index.html
  fr tho it's pretty cool research
  
  I'm just imagining the scene in a sci fi comedy.
  "I thought you said we were getting mechanical tails? Why the Hell is this attached to my front?"
  "Experiments determined that this was actually the more effective and cheaper option. Don't worry, a front tail works just fine for balance!"
  
  That one looks attached at the front ...
- You're right, it seems. That video is old (6 years), but I couldn't find any photos or videos that look substantially different from it.
  "Arque tail" is the keywords to search for, if anyone wants to do their own research.
- Do people just use "AI" now instead of "Photoshopped"
  
  What kind of office chair has one leg that's 50% longer than the others and why is there a tube extending directly downward from the ceiling to above that chair? People cranking out this sort of thing absolutely use AI instead of Photoshop now.

Now if it can stab people and drain them of their bioenergy, I can reach my final form!
- I'm supposed to be cleaning but now I'm laughing too hard imagining some "saturday morning cartoon" tokusatsu show about a squad of mecha-grandmas.
  
  Tonight on Lifetime-Japan, Speed Walkers - A motley crew of septuagenarians must defeat the evil doer, osteoarthritis man, else they will be forced to deal with painful joints! Can these grizzled grandmas come out victorious? Tune in to find out!
  
  tokusatsu
  What does this word mean?
- https://youtu.be/zJ3qtWOz9tE

Furry costumes just got more lifelike.

I have a feeling a completely different audience has a definite interest. They would just cover it in the same fur as the rest of their costume.
- I was hoping for research into genetically adding one to a human, but I'll.take this.
  
  Comes later.
  
  You already have the nerves there, and it's quite trivial to connect them to a neurotransmitter, especially since the patent expired.

The next thing I need is an articulated mouth and the ability to spit fire. And spikes on my back!
For balance as well, obviously.

Yeah, that'll help elderly people with mobility issues — hucking another 5 kg of metal, motors and batteries around.
- The way it’s depicted, the weight will be felt around the center point of the body. That’s where it exerts the least force. Also I contest the notion that a difference of 5kg is that significant, even in elderly people.
  
  Where the weight acts is significant imo, and the hips near the spine is probably most stable.
  
  One of the typical bits of advice for elderly folks walking around is a five pound limit on carried items, so five kilos is probably going to affect things more. Poor mobility is a downward line though, not a sudden switch that is flipped, so there is a range of walking difficulties and I'm sure some of that range will be helped by a device like this.

Can I... uhhm... get one too? Maybe a little more fluffy? Ohh, and it would be nice if it could wag too... U know... Just for... uhhm... balancing purposes...
(‘~‘; )
👉👈
- Theres a few companies that make moving tails (and wings) for a few hundred USD, but they tend to be waitless rather than designed for balancing
  
  Are the wings flyable ?

Yup. That's the most cost-effctive solution to the elderly falling problem. Trust me there is no other reason we are doing this.
- My dreams of kick boxing like a kangaroo may finally come truee
- Money for elderly that can prevent them from needing very expensive nursing home care is a huge market with no limit if the product works well. Especially for Japan but really everywhere will have increasingly large cohorts of their elderly people with not enough young people to care for them.

Cat girls or helping the elderly walk steadily?
- Both?
  
  It's Japan, it was definitely Cat Girls first, literally any justification to spend money developing this second.
  If it were me it'd be a dragon tail, but to each their own.

Will it stop my girlfriend from poking at my butthole when I'm above her on the stairs?
- Nothing will
- Ladies first, for this reason
- To be fair you are supposed to get her back when she's above you, its unwritten relationship code.
- Now you can iron tail her if she tries some shit. Let her know who's the real Pokémon master.

I can think of another demographic that would like this...
- It's Japan, we all know what they really invented it for. But they needed something acceptable to put on the grant application

In all seriousness, human elderlies are actually evolutionary anomaly, because if Darwinian tenet of "survival of the fittest" applies 100% of the time, they would not be the norm. But the fact that old people are prevalent in human society is the proof that we are compassionate and loving creatures that transcend cold evolutionary programming. We care for others and the vulnerable.
- Almost all of it comes down to how long it takes to raise children. It takes a lot more people and effort and time to raise humans vs any other species, and its made us unique in that we have essentially support roles. Elderly people, people who can't or dont want to have kids of their own, even older children, all have a role to play in making sure we make it to adulthood and continue the species.
  
  Does anyone currently have any elders taking care of their kids? Or having done so?
  The current generation of Elders living today aren't doing shit for support.
  I would argue given how much voting power they have - they are actively making it worse for ~~parents~~ everyone
  
  The "grandmother theory" is supporting this idea.
  The idea is that past a certain age there is an evolutionary benefit to not be able to have kids anymore. Past a certain age, to pass our genes it's more beneficial to be able to help descendants with their kids rather than having kids on our own.
- Sure, in the context of physical abilities.
  However, i think bands of hominids who care for each other have a survival advantage. I guess thats who we've evolved to be social creatures.
  Also,, nanna might not be able to hunt mammoths anymore, but she knows what to do in years when the mammoth dont come.
- darwinian selection has nothing to do with aging. that's religious right / 1920s robber baron bullshit.
  
  Actually having elders in human societies is shown to positively correlate with better outcomes for the youth in that society. Grandmothers in particular have a measurable benefit.
  https://elifesciences.org/articles/92914
  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-93652-4
  
  Except that it isn't a religious thing. I don't know if it was natural selection or societal pressure causing artificial selection, but human's are something of an evolutionary anomaly in the sense that the only other animals on earth who go through menopause are a few species of whales. There's a whole evolutionary hypothesis tied to it called the grandmother hypothesis. Or you can watch this PBS video about it if you don't feel like reading. It's pretty interesting really.
  Edit: I'm also just gonna paste a paragraph from the wikipedia if people want the tl;dr.
  Evolutionary theory dictates that all organisms invest heavily in reproduction in order to replicate their genes. According to parental investment, human females will invest heavily in their young because the number of mating opportunities available to them and how many offspring they are able to produce in a given amount of time is fixed by the biology of their sex. This inter birth interval (IBI) is a limiting factor in how many children a woman can have because of the extended developmental period that human children experience. Extended childhood, like the extended post-reproductive lifespan for females, is relatively unique to humans.[8] Because of this correlation, human grandmothers are well-poised to provide supplemental parental care to their offspring's children. Since their grandchildren still carry a portion of their genes, it is still in the grandmother's genetic interest to ensure those children survive to reproduction.
- There are other species which have elderly members, namely whales and elephants.
  It’s postulated that having grandmothers helps in a species where young take a long time to mature.
  
  The thing is, for it to be an evolutionary advantage it can't be common. That's one theory behind why grandmas aren't more common in species.
- I posted this further down but you would enjoy it if you haven't seen it already. The end of the video supports your statement. Why Your Grandmother Is an Evolutionary Mystery
- And how many successful actually productive and generous persons alive wore glasses? Yep, you entered another mind trap.
- It was Herbert Spencer who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest," and felt that Darwin's biological theory of natural selection could be expanded to other aspects of society like philosophy and economics. His writings were misinterpreted by the creators of social Darwinism theory and eugenicists.
- What was that study again? Something like 30% of people would just swerve into a fake turtle to kill it, for no fucking reason at all. TL;DR There's an anomaly alright, murdery people.
- fact that old people are prevalent in human society is the proof that we are compassionate and loving creatures
  It could be media/social programing from perspective of the wiser imposed on the foolish.

Finally something to balance the enormous mass I have in front.
- If you have an erection lasting more than four hours please contact your doctor.
  
  He'll probably be pretty impressed and offer a high five.
  
  But how will I then hang my coat?

Looking at other papers from the same lab and this is the silliest paper I've ever seen, they're evaluating the effect of shining rgb lights at glass noodles on the eating experience
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.06069

This is just the first step towards making Dr Octopuss a reality. AND WE DON'T HAVE SPIDERMAN TO SAVE US!!!!
- Don't worry, Walmart is working on creating Shrimpman
- I would say it’s more like Scorpion (the tail) meets Vulture (the elderly).
  
  THIS is, yes, but they're saying its the first step.
- Why do we need a spiderman? I've got two granny-pusses and a grandpaussy in the retirement home that can come put a squash on any shenanigans.

About time they did something for the furries.

honestly the best posture advice I have ever gotten is to sit like I have a tail (you would have to tilt your hips forward and stick your butt out behind you to put the tail up behind you rather than curling your tailbone under such that you'd be sitting on the tail).
- Nobody wants to do that because men are thirsty.
  
  Hahahaha insert of the day 😂
  I'm not sitting improperly.... It's the patriarchy!
  
  true as a man, they thirst for my booty when all I care for is good back posture
  
  As a five five man I can assure you that I do do this and the only ones thirsty for that are my cats seeking ont my blood.

YES. THIS IS THE GOAL.

Make it fluffy and I'm in
- Also allow us to whip the tail too 👍
  
  I gotta be able to flick it around at will yes
- Or scaly.
  \ Or covered in suckers.
  \ Or feathers.
  
  Not for me thanks but I love this for people who would

I would put it on the front

Just what the japanes elderly need, a heavy battery powered contraption strapped to their waist to be more stable. I've also heard in Tokyo that everyone is always 5ft apart from one another, plenty of room to be whipping a pseudo tail around.
- Just uhh…give it a few wheels, optimally in the front…like make it 4 wheels and they can grab 2 handles with brakes to stabilize on slopes. They might not even have to use the tail too much
  …oh…that‘s just a walker, isn‘t it?
  
  a walker but strap 2 jet engines to it
- Oh that rural Tokyo, where the rice fields go on further than the eye can see. This would be super helpful navigating those plank bridges.

It remeber me an painting of Patrick Woodroffe
- They got the guy three sets of robohands but couldn't figure out some mechanolegs for him?
  
  Same for this Tail, there are better system to solve postural problems, walking difficulties and other physical issues. How will you simply sit down with this tail? Or precisely in Japan, entering in an Subway with it? They often invent overcomplicated solutions without need, for easy to solve problems, above solving it only tangential and even adding more problems.
- Now that is some kickass artwork

I'd get 5 so I can work without hands.
- Be careful or you're gonna end up fighting Spiderman.

Can we wear these if we don't have balance issues? Asking for a friend.

I was a bit surprised because I had never heard of that research group, but apparently they are not from the engineering department, but from media design.
Here is some more Info, if anyone is curious. But it seems more like a concept paper, than an extra prototype.

About time this cyberpunk timeline got on with the cool bits

what about the added weight of the tail? I dont believe elderly got good knees
- Yeah we should make it more like the rear-half of a centaur
  
  atp isn't it just wheelchair but legs
  so legchair

Would the tail improve the movements for a Shinobi?

What's next, litter boxes in nursing homes? /s

Is this a return to monke meme made manifest?

Won't people get used to this, making it harder to walk without it?
- Exactly, it will work just like glasses, help people avoid real struggle and not do their best to overcome simple issues like aging hips
- And also sitting down is hard now. But yeah, you have to imagine all the stabilization your muscles used to do are now taken care of by this robot tail. So atrophy away!
  
  What sort of a trophy we talkin here?
  
  Eventually the tail offers to curl up and carry you, then we’re just a step away from the Wall-E chairs
- Only if it's useful