Source : youtube
Allen Pan, a YouTuber, decided to do something that many ophiophilists (people who like snakes) have wondered about. How would snakes look if they had legs? His video provides the answer.
Snakes’ reptilian ancestors, according to evolutionary biologists, had legs. When we talk about ancestors, we’re talking about ancient ones, who lived more than 150 million years ago. Snakes gave-up their strut and opted to slither along the ground over a long period of time. Here is an NPR report if you want more information about how that occurred.
Contrastingly, the major job of giving them their legs back happened much faster, as shown in the video below.
Why did the snake want legs?
We previously reported on how students used 3D printing to provide prosthetics to injured dogs. These are kind people who want to give these animals the option to move around freely, to their heart desire.
However, in the case of YouTuber Allen Pan, this logic does not apply. The snakes are not injured, nor are they missing a necessary component for locomotory needs. So, aside from playing God, it appears that there is very little reason to power through something like this.
As seen in the video, he does show us the visuals that inspired him to do this. So, before we proceed towards how effective this build has been, no snake ever approached the YouTuber and asked for a quartet of legs.
Does the contraption work well?
Fortunately, Pan is astute enough to recognise that not all designs can be implemented. The first method, as seen in the video, required a snake to be strapped into some creepy toys. Recognizing this folly early on, the YouTuber appears to be considerate enough to use a dummy snake rather than a harass real one.
Pan’s second design, as seen in the video, is far superior & harmless to the snake it is intended to assist. The snake is houses in a long clear plastic tube that is connected to four legs, each with three joints, and it appears that it can only move forward.
Pan can put the contraption to work and take the snake for a ‘walk’ once the snake enters the tube (mostly by constant nudging for now) and reaches the other end of the tube. Because the plastic housing cannot be closed, the snake is free to leave at any time.
Guess that’s the biggest sign a user is unhappy with the product, and the biggest feedback for Pan’s design. For its great premise, the product is pretty rudimentary and doesn’t really add a missing ability to the snake. Maybe giving the snake more control over where the robot goes, or the ability to scale flat walls, would get the snakes’ interest.
Pan probably discovered the hard way that reversing evolution is not something that can be done overnight. He would have known that snakes actually possess all the elements required to develop legs at the molecular level if he had read the NPR article we shared earlier. Perhaps genetic engineering will produce better outcomes the next time.
