The horror that is the cloaca bot(John Dalton/Creative Commons)

Step right up and behold a marvel of 18th century robotics! See the Jacques de Vaucanson’s fabulous digesting duck, the clockwork miracle capable of reproducing the biological miracles of ingestion, digestion and defecation! In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Julie and I dive into the history books for more on how the pooping duck may have worked and just what it’s creator was thinking.

Plus, humanity’s dream to create a digesting robot continues to this day! Prepare to learn about robotic garden slug gobblers and even the nightmarish cloaca bot.

Now let’s get down to stuff referenced in the podcast.

First, let me refer back to my post “The Pooping Duck: Marvel of 18th Century Robotics” which inspired this podcast. That out of the way, let me hit you with a few of the videos we refer to in the episode. First up is EcoBot II, followed by two videos from  Wim Delvoye’s nightmarish art installation “Cloaca.”

Delvoye feeds his creation:

Here’s a comparision between human feces and the feces created by the Cloaca bot:

And here’s a comical look at the creation from the TV show “Eurotrash.” Some of the poop language is NSFW:

So there you have it! You can find the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast on iTunes, Zune and the RSS feed. And don’t forget the free HowStuffWorks App!

Image source: John Dalton/Creative Commons

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