{"id":1666045,"date":"2026-02-23T01:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T06:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1666045"},"modified":"2026-02-23T01:05:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T06:05:00","slug":"waste-of-the-day-the-story-of-robosquirrel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/waste-of-the-day-the-story-of-robosquirrel\/1666045\/","title":{"rendered":"Waste Of The Day: The Story Of Robosquirrel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Waste Of The Day: The Story Of Robosquirrel<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Jeremy Portnoy via RealClearInvestigations<\/a>,<\/em><\/p>\n

Topline: <\/strong>Dr. Frankenstein was able to bring his monster back to life using just rusty tools and a cramped workshop. Researchers in California needed taxpayer funding from the National Science Foundation for their own reanimation experiment<\/strong>, with results that were not quite as impressive.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2012, San Diego State University and the University of California, Davis used part of a $325,000 grant to create \u201cRobosquirrel<\/a>,\u201d a taxidermied squirrel with a robotic tail. The money would be worth $459,000 today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s according to the \u201cWastebook\u201d reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname “Dr. No” by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn’t stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Coburn’s Wastebook 2012<\/a> included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth more than $18 billion, including the origin story of Robosquirrel.<\/p>\n

Key facts: <\/strong>Robosquirrel was built to study the predator and prey relationship between squirrels and rattlesnakes.<\/p>\n

The researchers placed Robosquirrel in a cage with live squirrels so that it would smell like the real thing. Then, they placed the robot in a field with snakes and moved it along a track to make it appear alive.<\/p>\n

The snakes were fooled. One even bit the robot\u2019s head. But when researchers heated up Robosquirrel\u2019s mechanical tail or made it wag, the rattlesnakes got scared and slithered away.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The project was still in its early stages in 2012. The researchers promised<\/a> that more animals \u2014 including RoboKangarooRat and Robosquirrel 2.0, which could throw rocks at rattlesnakes \u2014 would soon arrive, though it\u2019s unclear if they ever materialized.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Robosquirrel made national headlines in Forbes, CNN and more after Coburn included it in his Wastebook. San Diego State University told ABC News<\/a> that only part of the $325,000 grant was spent on taxidermy. <\/strong>The rest went to undergraduate research training.<\/p>\n

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world\u2019s largest government spending database at <\/em>OpenTheBooks.com<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nSun, 02\/22\/2026 – 20:05<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/waste-day-story-robosquirrel<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Waste Of The Day: The Story Of Robosquirrel Authored by Jeremy Portnoy via RealClearInvestigations, Topline: Dr. Frankenstein was able to bring his monster back to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1666046,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1666045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1666045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1666046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1666045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1666045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1666045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}