Hamster-powered sub

Two (unnamed?) Ocean Engineering students created a "hamster-powered submarine" from "materials derived from common household objects" that connected a hamster wheel in a sealed, air-supplied vessel to a propeller, allowing hamsters to take themselves on aquatic jaunts. They documented the build in some detail, and supplied a video of the maiden voyage. One of the design requirements was "the life and well being of the hamster must not be compromised in any way."

HPS Hamstar: the Hamster Powered Submarine (via DVICE)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Delightful Creatures • Gadgets • happy mutants • maker • video • youtube

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http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

The St. Petersburg (Florida) Times used to have a columnist named Don Addis. When he passed away in November 2009 the world lost a very funny guy. The first column of his I ever read was his response to people who thought a toy hamster-powered car was animal cruelty. Addis pointed out that, unlike stationary wheels, the cars allowed hamsters to actually go somewhere. And he asked, among other things, “Where would this country be without those twenty-hamster teams that hauled Borax out West?”

I wish he were still around to see this. Oh, how far we’ve come.
- http://stephenrice.eu Stephen Rice
  
  Cars seem less cruel than submarines, it’s the dunking hamsters under water in a converted soda bottle that strikes me here.
  
  Although cars are fine I think there’s a point at which you can change details of the hamster cars so much that even Don Addis would say “steady on now”.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

Looks like it might be a roborovski hamster
kansas

“the life and well being of the hamster must not be compromised in any way.” Really?
- Jedobe LLC
  
  Sure, just use dead ones. I’m sure you could render their little bodies into some sort of fuel. For bonus point, use the fuel in one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VA-111_Shkval
  - SoItBegins
    
    Ugh. Not funny, man.
http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm

“It’s an honor to meet you, Captain Nemo … but I somehow thought you’d be taller.”
xzzy

That guy in the Geico commercial with the rowing gunea pigs needs to meet up with this guy, and introduce the world to rodent naval warfare.

I’m sure there’s someone out there that has modified airsoft guns to shoot poop pellets, so there will be no shortage of ammunition.
chaopoiesis

Prop thrust looks negligible… but then actual transportation’s not listed as a project requirement.
- bluest_one
  
  It needs some gearing.
http://www.zachstronaut.com/ zachstronaut

I believe one could avoid torturing the hamsters simply by raising them in a cage that has hamster tubing access to the vessel which is already submerged in water. The critters will explore it as they see fit, and learn to use the wheel there. It won’t be very startling to then move them into a pool. That’s how I’d do it anyway. That was a fun problem to solve just now.
- Darryl Pearle
  
  Pretty good attempt, and points for subtracting the terror from a perfectly functioning scenario. But you are still gambling with the animal’s safety.
  - http://deansli.st/ Dean Putney
    
    In the Game of Science, you win or a bunch of hamsters die.
    - Darryl Pearle
      
      Funny, but sacrificing hamsters for science is one thing.. sacrificing them for fun is another. Of course we use animals for all kinds of purposes. Many of them are extremely delicious. I think you cross a line when you experiment on animals for laughs.
  - http://stephenrice.eu Stephen Rice
    
    Well, hamsters will swim unless you stick them in a plastic bottle. They’ll be fine as long as they can get out.
acidrain69

I’m pretty “meh” about this. It appears that they did everything possible to ensure the safety of the hamsters, but then went ahead and put it on the internet for any idiot to replicate.

Please don’t promote this kind of thing.

You want to endanger your own life and post it on youtube? Great, I’ll be watching on saturday mornings. You want to exploit the cuteness of your dog and put him on Youtube? Sure, Ok with that too. You want to scare an animal by locking it in a closed container and put it underwater, an environment that hamsters are not used to? Fuck you. Perhaps some other idiot out there will try to one up you and not do it with a positive air pressure in the container, causing the death on an animal for your thumbs up votes on youtube.

In other words: please don’t purposefully put animals in dangerous situations that they do not understand to score cool points on the internet.
- Darryl Pearle
  
  Can’t agree enough. This looks pretty clearly like grounds for an arrest under animal cruelty laws. Even in backwards hell holes like Canada and USA.
- PathosBill
  
  So you’re saying don’t do something because someone else might try to do it less well? That the first person is responsible for the second?
  That’s too far down the slippery slope toward thought police, IMHO.
  
  Also, IANAL, but this site
  http://www.animallaw.info/administrative/adusawaregb.htm#s37
  seems to have a lot about animal welfare and I find nothing that prohibits this action, careless though it may be.
  - Darryl Pearle
    
    No, I guess what I was getting at is, I’m not sure that otherwise great and influential sites like Make and Boing Boing are acting responsibly in promoting this.
    
    I think people should not do this because it’s an unnecessary endangerment and stress to an animal, with no purpose other than chuckles.
    
    You know, if you want to experiment/play with an underwater craft powered by a hamster wheel, you don’t need to endanger or terrify an animal to do it. Put a remote control car on the wheel for crying out loud.
    
    All attempts at safety aside, this is a homemade underwater craft made out of pop bottles, with a tube going to the surface for ventilation. A good rule of thumb would be, if you wouldn’t put your baby in it, then it isn’t safe.
    
    I’m honestly a bit shocked at how few people are at all concerned about the inhumane use of an animal in this case.
  - http://stephenrice.eu Stephen Rice
    
    This is nothing to do with thought police. This is don’t show idiots how they can stick hamsters in plastic bottles.
- http://twitter.com/MartianEmpress Rezeya Montecore
  
  And yet, conversely, I have seen people concern-troll videos of kittens taking 2″ drops and dogs having their noses touched. So I take comments that imagine harm into a video, where an animal is behaving normally and showing no great signs of distress, with big heaping fistfuls of salt.
  
  Your concern for the hamster is admirable, but your slippery-slope argument and your indignation over an entirely hypothetical imagining remind me a little too much of the logic behind moral panics that have done me and people I know a lot of harm. Our pet cats and toddlers strike greater fear into the hearts of hamsters than this every day. :p
semiotix

Sure, the hamster is physically safe, but you have to wonder about the effects of being shanghaied into the Hamster Navy. Especially an elite, close-knit group like hamster submariners. The language alone would shock the conscience of your more delicate hamster.
- MarcVader
  
  You think veer kidding und making mit de funny stuff?
Peter Chylewski

I like BoingBoing a lot, but at times it just puts me off. Why this penchant towards the raw, cruel, cynical (fill in your own words)? I just don’t understand this notion.
- headcode
  
  I appreciate the sensitivity. But really, that hamster looked completely oblivious to the fact that is was in a suddenly unnatural environment.
  
  I’m a vegetarian because I could no longer condone the killing of animals by others on my behalf. But this? I just found myself chuckling, especially because I believed the people making the video had no interest in harming the critter. The hamster carrying on as though everything was normal was just funny to me.
JoshP

Why is no one else feeling the gawd shrieking terror that is so obvious here. Hamster Submariners? What if they and the rats are able to float nukes on that platform? What if they ally with the Bear Infantry? Why have we been forsaken?
btw, hamsters are still considered food in some parts of the world people, get over yourselves.
- Tribune
  
  I know people eat things with very little meat on them – but really hamsters?
  - http://stephenrice.eu Stephen Rice
    
    Hamsters do their best with the wheels they have but you get some pretty meaty hamsters (it’s the cake).
http://twitter.com/sirdiesel Jason

Take 2? I’m not sure I want to know what happened to the hamsters in take 1.
http://twitter.com/Listener43 Listener43

It would take only a series of slight malfunctions to turn this into a full on hamster sous vide demonstration.
http://www.doggo.org doggo

Needs stabilizing fins.

Also, my past experience with hamsters and gerbils leads me to believe that the hamster, far from being frightened, probably didn’t really give a shit that it was under water. If it was aware of it at all.
Layne

What we see here is the beginning of a global hamster-submarine GAP.
Now China and the Middle East are going to be scrambling to develop more advanced rodent-powered submersibles!
http://twitter.com/ManekiNico Maneki Nico

Hammy Hamster called. He says “Been there; done that.”
parrotboy

A novel way to kill a hamster, somewhat more technically advanced than the typical methods, which tend to include:
- forget to close the cage and the cat eats it
- roll over on it
- forget to feed it
-forget you have a hamster when you go away for a few days
niktemadur

Your submarine engine was a hamster, and your battleship smelt of elderberries!
Eric Hunt

I was surprised by the lack of video creation/editing skills exhibited by the students. It seems I encounter more 19-22 year olds who can make a killer youtube short but can’t do anything else, so when one is actually competent at science but doesn’t know how to make a broadcast-ready youtube video, it’s strange.

And the concern trolls are strong in this thread. Sheesh. Don’t ever go to southern Peru.
- http://stephenrice.eu Stephen Rice
  
  I don’t really see the issue. What does “broadcast-ready” mean to you? It’s a “point a camera at what you’ve made” video. You don’t need Martin Scorsese and a 4k camera for that.
  - Eric Hunt
    
    It’s not an issue, more of an observation. The ability of the under 30 crowd to create, edit, etc., a pro-level video clip is much higher than of people in my generation, the 38+ crowd. So when I saw one that was clearly below that standard, it surprised me.
    - http://stephenrice.eu Stephen Rice
      
      Yeah, for apparently smart people they’re hopelessly inept at either keeping a camera entirely out of water or putting it entirely under water.
    - narddogz
      
      I’d rather see under-edited than over-edited any day. I can’t tell you how many times there has been a video on some fascinating subject here on BB that has been reduced to a nearly unwatchable mess, due to someone wanting to show off their l33t editing skillz rather than presenting the subject in the best way possible. Usually done by a “digital native” who, thanks to modern-day media overload, has all the attention span of a gnat.
      - Eric Hunt
        
        I would rather everyone write up their experience and include good photos than do a video. The explosion of facts-via-video the last decade is not my cup of tea. I can’t skim a video and carefully read the critical sections, nor can I do any kind of text searches on a video.
        
        It’s even spread to the workplace – I’ve watched required, important training videos with essential information that’s not replicated anywhere else! No way to search it later for something you’ve forgotten.
        
        Hopefully computer learning will advance to a point before I die where the words spoken in videos will be instantly searchable. Then I’ll quit waving my cane angrily.
The Hamster King

We approve.

And the research into miniature torpedoes … how is that proceeding?
Darryl Pearle

Does somebody have a spare cat that I can use in my experimental aircraft made from zip locs and chewing gum? Nothing can go wrong: there is only a small amount of radium dust evenly coating the whole thing, plus I have included a little seat belt made from discarded twist ties.
- flosofl
  
  Make sure you post on You Tube!
  
  I’ll just look for a channel created by DP_ConcernTroll