Rat Boners And Drunk Birds: 5 Hilarious Animal Experiments

Penguins are one of the most notoriously camera-shy animals out there, which has always made it difficult to observe them up close in their natural habitat. So to get unadulterated penguin behavior in real time, scientists have been using mobile cameras hidden inside penguin robots of ... varying sophistication.

IBTimes UK

Of all the penguin spy bots, BBC's RockhopperCam is arguably the most technologically well-equipped. It features an authentic waddling gait and the ability to right itself should it ever topple over. The Rockhopper robot was so lifelike that it landed one momentarily lonely male penguin in hot water. While the penguin's lady was out of town, the randy male made the robot's acquaintance and, well, basically fell in love with it. But when the dashing cad's wife returned from penguin errands, she was so enraged that she laid fisticuffs to the robotic hussy and pushed it to the ground.

John Downer Productions

Then we have the EmperorCam, which is a remote-controlled toboggan that's actually managed to film Emperor Penguin chicks being birthed for the first time in history.

Discovery/BBC/John Downer via ABC News

These varied surveillance media took almost a year's worth of footage for an extensive BBC special called Penguins: Spy In The Huddle, probably because there were some copyright issues with naming it The Truman Show, But With Penguins.

Cows are responsible for 25 percent of the global emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times more damaging than the perennially villainized carbon dioxide. Obviously, this leaves us with two options: Either we stop eating cheeseburgers, or we stop the cows from slowly gassing us into extinction. Thankfully, Argentinean mad scientists decided to go with the second option by inventing special devices that suck up bovine farts and burps.

INTA via Big Think

It's still a prototype that probably won't ever be adopted globally, but researchers from Argentina's National Institute of Agricultural Technology have come up with a sort of fart backpack (fartpack) that inserts a tube into the cow's digestive tract. The procedure is reportedly painless, and once it's completed, it allows us to funnel the cows' lethal flatulence and burps into a separate collecting chamber strapped to their backs. Then we poke a hole in the backpack, light the gas, and WHAM: rocket cows.

Ooorrrrr we can take the boring route, do what the scientists proposed, and use the methane as an energy source. And what an energy source: A good farting day can produce 80 gallons of methane. That's enough to power your refrigerator for 24 hours, or get you through a full day's commute. It should definitely be enough to create cow jetpacks.

BBC

The squirrels would taunt the serpents by moving their tails back and forth to goad them into attacking -- hell, some would even kick sand in the snake's face like a comic book bully -- then dodge the attack and run away. The scientists figured that this was an attempt to warn other, more oblivious squirrels of the presence of a snake. But first, they had to test their hypothesis. To find out whether squirrels were being bravely altruistic or just insane, the researchers devised a hilariously dickish experiment.

They set up cork-launching guns across squirrel habitats, placing some in snake-heavy areas and others in safe zones with no snake sightings. It turned out that the squirrels in snake-free areas simply scurried away without much fanfare when they were shot at. But the squirrels dining in serpent territory were far more amped, pulling off acrobatic, Ninja Gaiden-esque evasive maneuvers when the corks came flying their way.

B.J. Putman and R.W. Clark/Behavioral Ecology via Science News

So the scientists were probably right, and the squirrel acrobatics were like a snake early warning system. Either that, or being a squirrel is really boring, and this is their version of the X Games.