By Evan Ackerman

If I had a shirt like this, I’m sure I’d be happy as this strange looking boy is. Totally Absurd Inventions insists that this is an actual US patent, although I haven’t been able to find it on the USPTO website, so I can’t do much besides relate what they say about it:

The Gerbil Shirt wraps your torso in plastic tube passageways, making your bod a super highway of fun for Binky and Bart. The interior surfaces are textured for traction and have air vents for easy breathing.

The inventor suggests you can clean the Gerbil Shirt by attaching it to a faucet (remove pets first please), and you should avoid collisions and falls that could cause pet panic.

[ Patently Absurd ] VIA [ Neatorama ]

By David Ponce

It’s a little plastic bag attached to a harness that you tie to your dog’s behind and that catches its excrement. It’s great! We can see all sorts of enjoyment in this product. For one, you’ll be the center of attraction anywhere you go; nothing quite like a dog with a plastic bag stuck to its ass to get people talking. Secondly, it’ll help you bond with your dog as he’ll be eternally grateful that you’ve thought of such a dignified way of dealing with his natural excretions.

Don’t believe us? Hit the jump for a convincing FAQ, as well as a fascinating video and links. Out here, you get to find out it’s between $30 and $40 depending on your dog’s size.

This is straight from the website.

My dog will not like it for sure?

Actually, dogs don’t like many things such as “they don’t like shower”, “they don’t like to stay home alone”, “they don’t like to eat dog cookies”, however, when they are used to all these things, they will be excited about it.

Why my dog seem not able to get used to “PooTrap”?

In many ways dog is like human being! It’s like when first time people use camera to take photos, for sure it seems weird but nowadays many people around the world are using cameras for taking photos.

Dog feel not respected when wearing “PooTrap”?

Babies wear diapers and they are truly loved by their parents, hence same applied to the dogs owners who use our “PooTrap” actually truly love their dogs.

I would rather like to pick up poop by myself?

People invented many useful technologies to make people’s life easier. All these inventions (car is among one of them) are to make people’s life more convenient. With our “PooTrap”, no need to worry that dogs will cause environment pollution, and as dogs owners may know, actually it’s difficult to pick up poop.

We can sense some hesitation, folks. So below is a handy video.

[ Product Page (Unfortunate auto-audio) ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

By Evan Ackerman

No flies were harmed in the making of these airplanes.

[ AirSpace ] VIA [ Neatorama ]

By Evan Ackerman

Unlike the ambiguously betentacled USB sea creatures we’ve seen before, this is most definitely a USB squid, and not a cuttlefish. Nifer Fahrion makes each DataSquid by hand out of wool, and endows them with USB data storage which is accessible by removing the two long tentacles. 8 gigs worth of squid is $95.

[ NifNaks ]

By Evan Ackerman

Psst, let me let you in on a little secret… Your cat’s ears? They’re actually USB drives. Go on, pull them off and see. If you’ve never used them before, you might have to tug pretty hard, but trust me, they’re in there. It’s one of the many perks of cat ownership. It works on cat tails, too. Actually, just one of them is a USB drive… The other one is a USB drive cleaner.

Pretty soon, we’re going to be able to put together an entire USB cat. And when that happens… Um, I have no idea what will happen when that happens, but it’ll be it will involve nuclear Armageddon and/or a rain of frogs. 2 gigs worth of ear is $44, and 8 gigs is $65.

[ Rakuten ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

Everybody knows that girls are attracted to guys with dogs. This is why, if you’re desperate, you can rent dogs by the hour. But what kind of dog is most effective at picking up chicks? This is the burning question that the Puppy Pulling Power experiment was designed to answer. Five different breeds of dogs (a Border Collie, a Pug, a Samoyed, a Staffy, and a Yorkie) were outfitted with a Sony Ericsson C510 camera phone (with smile detection software) on their collars, and whenever the dog lifted up its head to receive the attentions of an adoring female, the phone would snap a picture when (or if) she smiled. As you might expect, the dogs had a rather, uh, advantageous angle, so I’m going to go ahead and call the following trailer slightly NSFW due to cleavageness.

Yeah, it seems pretty fake to me too (they were sponsored by Sony Ericsson), but I don’t think that necessarily invalidates the results. Have a look at those after the jump (including some of the pics that you really want to see), but here’s a spoiler: the Samoyed wins by a cute widdle nose.

There’s a gallery of the “best of puppycam” girls here.

[ Puppy Pulling Power ] VIA [ Hacked Gadgets ]

We saw a preview of the first 45 minutes of Pixar’s newest animated feature, Up, back in March at WonderCon. Boy, were we ever impressed. One of the most enjoyable characters in the film is Dug, a dog who can talk. Now, I know what you’re thinking: talking dogs, big deal, it’s been beaten to death starting with Homeward Bound and most recently with Underdog. The difference with Dug is that Dug actually is a talking dog, not a dog talking like a human:

Up comes out in theaters (in 2D and 3D) on May 29th, but we’ll be at a screening on May 11th and give you the lowdown a couple weeks early.

[ Up ] VIA [ UGO ]

By Evan Ackerman

This is Mashimaro. It’s supposed to be a rabbit, but it’s called Mashimaro because it looks like a marshmallow or something. It is, I guess, Korea’s defense against Hello Kitty, in that it supposedly has some kind of anime series behind it (that “puts a humorous light to toilet habits”) but it’s most often seen on products of dubious quality and usefulness. And here you go, it’s a Mashimaro MP3 player.

Measuring 54 x 38 x 38mm (about matchbox sized, just fatter), the 19 gram MP3 player comes with 2 gigs of storage. It has light-up ears that also serve as a five way controller. There’s a butt-jack for headphones as well a USB connector in there somewhere that charges an internal battery for up to 9 hours of playback. the Mashimaro MP3 player costs about $45, comes in white, sky blue, or soft pink, and you may or may not be able to get it at the partially translated website below.

[ Sorikom ] VIA [ PMP Today ]

By Evan Ackerman
Cross-posted from BotJunkie.com

We’ve admired Festo’s bio-inspired robots in the past, including the AirJelly and the AirRay. They’ve just come out with two new species: aquatic penguins, and flying penguins:

Some of the other stuff in that video is pretty cool, too. We posted about the Molecubes earlier this week, but you can watch more detailed videos on the AquaPenguins, AirPenguins, and InteractiveWall on Festo’s YouTube channel. And if you’re into the juicy technical details, here’s a PDF on the AquaPenguins and a PDF on the AirPenguins.

Get more awesome robot stuff like this every day at BotJunkie.com.

[ Festo ] VIA [ BotJunkie ]

By Evan Ackerman

Those damn squirrels. Every time they eat a nut, they keep a tree from growing, which is pretty much exactly the same as cutting down a tree with a chainsaw, setting fire to it, and then injecting the ashes directly into the ozone layer. So, it’s good to see that the old fashioned nut-powered squirrel has been replaced with a much more eco-friendly version that runs on solar power. Just stick him outside somewhere that gets sun during the day, and at night, you’ll have yourself a glowing squirrel. And having a glowing squirrel is very, very important, for a truly marvelous reason which this margin is too narrow to contain.

The Solar Illuminated Squirrel is $55.

[ Eco-Lights ] VIA [ Nerd Approved ]