So you know how earlier today you were concerned about those unpaid parking tickets and your winter heating bill? Yeah, well the good news is that you really don’t need to focus too much on that stuff right now, because OH MY GOD, WHAT THE F**K IS THAT?! Are you kidding me? I can barely handle small dogs let alone a grasshopper the size of a boxing glove. How the hell am I supposed to live my life normally after seeing something like this?

Well, step one is knowing that this photograph comes from Little Barrier Island in New Zealand, the only country known to carry these giant weta. Step two is to realize that this particular species is also endangered, so chances are slim you’re ever going to trip over one of these ladies. And the last step, part three, is understanding that this is the biggest giant weta they’ve ever recorded; so although they’re out there, most would never be this large. Thank God.

Via park ranger Mark Moffett:

“Three of us walked the trails of this small island for two nights scanning the vegetation for a giant weta. We spent many hours with no luck finding any at all, before we saw her up in a tree.”

“She enjoyed the carrot so much she seemed to ignore the fact she was resting on our hands and carried on munching away. She would have finished the carrot very quickly, but this is an extremely endangered species and we didn’t want to risk indigestion. After she had chewed a little I took this picture and we put her right back where we found her.” [DailyMail]

Wait, wait, wait -so what you’re telling me is that we let this thing go?! No one even attempted to kill it with fire?! Oh man, oh man, oh man, oh man…
*rips open medicine cabinet, feverishly searches for Xanax*

Additional (horrifying) image after the jump:
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Cthulhu fhtagn

Kaylene Kau, an industrial designer from Seattle, Washington, created the prosthetic arm seen above.  There’s nothing I can say here that won’t get the advertisers up in arms about the “no tentacle rape joke” policy which I’m pretty sure they just made up to spite us and to undermine our Octopus of the Month business (slogan: “Eight Arms, No Questions”).  To which I say to the advertisers, stop getting up in arms and get your arms up in these tentacles instead.  And then let’s just see where the day takes us.

As a part of a student project, Kau was asked to “push the boundaries of current upper-limb prosthetic design.” Powered by a small motor and a set of cables, the tentacle shaped prosthetic arm curls its claw to grip objects. [DVICE]

Thanks for the nightmares, Kaylene Kau.

Spectrum tells us this snake robot “goes where humans can’t”, which sounds like a threat. No sir, I don’t like it. This snakebot is made by the same company — HiBot, a spinoff of the Hirose-Fukushima Lab at the Tokyo Institute of Technology — that made the swimming snake robot.  This model, the ACM-R4H, was built smaller than their other models for remote surveillance in tight spaces (giggity).  It’s half a meter long, weighs 4.5 kg (~10 lb), has a three hour battery life, comes with a camera and LEDs, and can be fitted with infrared vision or mechanical grippers.  Yes, grippers.  Hang on.  *wanders into the backyard, takes a deep breath, screams, birds fly away in all directions*

And I’m back.  Check out the video below if you want to see this navigating 90 degree corners in air ducts and avoiding obstacles.  And so it begins.

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If the swimming robot wasn’t terrifying enough for you, there’s good news, as Carnegie Mellon University has released a new video of their tree-climbing robot.  This biomimetic robot mimics the movements of a snake to reach places people and other robots can’t reach.

Moreover, these highly articulated devices can coordinate their internal degrees of freedom to perform a variety of locomotion capabilities that go beyond the capabilities of conventional wheeled and the recently developed legged robots. The true power of these devices is that they are versatile, achieving behaviors not limited to crawling, climbing, and swimming. [CMU Biorobotics Lab]

Wait, not limited to crawling, climbing, and swimming?  What else?  Do they jump?  Holy crap they totally jump don’t they?  I knew it.  I bet they can fly, too.  Oh lawd flying snakebots, I need to lie down.  Oh god, it can do Inception too can’t it?

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The Hirose-Fukushima Lab at the Tokyo Institute of Technology has unveiled their newest iteration of an amphibious snake robot called ACM-R5.  It combines water-proof bellows with universal joints covered with passive wheels and paddles, the latter helping it travel nearly as fast in water as it does on land.

As you can see in the video embedded below, the ACM-R5 moves like a real-life snake – even in water. Each joint comes with its own CPU, motor and battery to make sure they can work independently. [CrunchGear]

That’s right, when the robot snakes come for you (and they will) don’t even bother seeking refuge in the ocean.  They will only drag you into the briny deep, then make boots out of you just for the irony.  Frickin’ hipster amphibious robot snakes.  How do they keep their keffiyehs on when they don’t have shoulders?  Oh, they make me so mad.

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