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Just like humans, when an animal loses a leg or other important body part, a prosthetic can mean the difference between living a normal life and struggling on a day to day basis. Here are ten stories of animals that suffered loss and then learned to live with a new adaptation to their body.
While some people criticize the efforts put into these prosthetics, particularly in species that are not under threat of extinction, it is important to realize that these developments could help save a critical breeding member of an endangered species one day. Additionally, many of these techniques are brand new and by testing them on animals, researchers are developing useful insights to see if they may one day work on humans. If you end up losing a body part and get a bionic replacement twenty years from now, you might just have a cat or dog to thank for your top-of-the-line prosthetic.
Oscar lost his two rear legs in an accident with a combine harvester. After losing so much blood, his owners were told to expect the worst, but even after he survived the ordeal, their vet warned that cats rarely live happy lives with only two legs. Fortunately, he referred Oscars owners, Kate Allen and Mike Nolan to a veterinary surgeon who specializes in state-of-the-art animal medicine.
After looking at Oscar’s situation, Dr. Noel Fitzpatrick agreed to take on the new patient, surgically fitting him with implants that can eventually be attached to prosthetic paws. The surgery makes Oscar a notable kitty as he is the first cat to ever have prosthetic paws.
While the process was a success, Oscar’s paws haven’t yet been perfected for outdoor use. He has been made to be a house cat for the rest of his life, but really…that’s not all that bad now is it, especially when you consider how he was injured in the first place.
The first animal to receive such treatment though was Storm, a Belgian Sheperd, who lost his paw after it became infected with a tumor. The same vet that would later provide Oscar with his bionic paws, Noel Fitzpatrick, was the first to offer this service to any animal and Storm was the perfect candidate. Fitzpatrick says that he hopes his developments can eventually be used to help soldiers returning from Iraq and victims of the July 7th bombings in London.
Earlier this year, Naki’o became the first dog in the world to be fitted with a full set of bionic paws from Orthopets, a leader in the pet prosthetics industry. Far from just helping him walk easier, the paws are so well attached that he can now run and swim just as he did before the accident. Naki’o lost his paws due to severe frostbite after his previous owners abandoned him to fend for himself throughout the freezing winter in Nebraska. Despite the fact that the poor pup had to crawl on his stomach to move, he still found a loving adoptive family who worked tirelessly to raise the money to get Naki’o the prosthetics he desperately needed. Their efforts paid off as Naki’o is now thrilled to have his bionic paws and is eager to run, jump and fetch with his new family.
We often post stupid criminal stories here at Neatorama. This isn’t one of them. No, this fellow was most cunning. Christopher Lowcock wrapped up his prosthetic leg in bandages. When private contractors hired by the police attached an electronic monitoring device to him, they wrapped it around the false leg. Then Lowcock took it off whenever he needed to move about town without being traced:
Lowcock could then simply remove his leg – and the tag – whenever he wanted to breach his court-imposed curfew for driving and drug offences, as well as possession of an offensive weapon.
A second G4S officer who went to check the monitoring equipment also failed to carry out the proper test.
Managers became suspicious last month, but when they returned to the address a third time Lowcock had already been arrested and was back in custody accused of driving while banned and without insurance.
Link -via Gizmodo | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user 85mm.ch used under Creative Commons license
Naki’o lost the lower parts of his four legs as a puppy, but Martin Kaufman of OrthoPets designed and attached four prosthetic legs for him that mimic the natural movements of dogs. Now he can get run around like a normal dog! Link -via Geekosystem | OrthoPets
Kaylene Kau is a recent graduate of the industrial design program at the University of Washington. She built a prosthetic arm. But instead of trying to replicate the functions of a human hand, she built a functional tentacle.
From the files of the Science Museum’s History of Medicine website comes this impressive prosthetic limb, dated to the 1850-1910 period.
Made from steel and brass, this unusual prosthetic arm articulates in a number of ways. The elbow joint can be moved by releasing a spring, whereas the top joint of the wrist allows a degree of rotation and an up-and-down motion. The fingers can also curl up and straighten out. The leather upper arm piece is used to fix the prosthesis to the remaining upper arm. The rather sinister appearance of the hand suggests the wearer may have disguised it with a glove.
The object is apparently part of the Wellcome Trust collection. One wonders if it was found in a hydraulic press and donated to them by a woman named Sarah.
Link (where there’s lots more cool stuff…)
The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and DARPA have begun testing the effectiveness of a thought-controlled artificial arm:
Researchers plan to install the first system into a quadriplegic patient; while amputees can be outfitted with traditional prostheses, the MPL will be the first artificial limb that can sidestep spinal cord injury by plugging directly into the brain. This isn’t the first brain-controlled interface to be used in humans – we’ve previously reported on Braingate, a system that uses brain impulses to control computer cursors and restore communication to locked-in patients. But the MPL will offer the first hard-wired neural control of bionic body parts, whether lost to injury or neurodegenerative disease.
Link via Nerdcore | Photo: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/DARPA.
British cat Oscar lost his hind feet to a harvester. But doctors have been able to attach prosthetic replacements:
In a three-hour procedure, the veterinary surgical team inserted the pegs by drilling into one of Oscar’s ankle bones in each of his back legs. The implants, which are attached to the bone at the amputation site, were coated with hydroxyapatite to encourages bone cells to grow onto the metal.
The skin then grows over a special “umbrella” at the end of the peg to form a seal against bacteria and potentially fatal infections. The peg protrudes through the bone and skin, allowing the custom-built artificial paws to then be securely attached.
Oscar was trying to stand a day after the surgery and, despite some problems with infection, he was able to bear weight equally on all four limbs within four months.
Link and Video via Geekologie | Photo: Jim Incledon/PA
Swedish product designer Richard Stark made this flipper for amputees who would like to use their legs more effectively while swimming. It’s made so that it distributes forces to the sides, rather than the tip of the leg. The angle of the flipper can be changed to allow for different strokes. Video at the link.
Link via Fast Company | Photo: Yanko Design | Designer’s Website
Actually, it’s a leg covering, but I think that the artist’s goal was to create the impression of a functional, steampunk-style artificial leg. deviantART user Skinz-N-Hydez made this 13-14 pound leg and his gallery is filled with similarly wearable works of leather and brass.
British soldier Craig Lundberg of Walton, Merseyside, England was blinded by a by a rocket propelled grenade in Iraq in 2007. He has been fitted with a prototype BrainPort device that converts images from a video camera in his goggles into electrical impulses send to a plate in his mouth that he can read with his tongue.
L/Cpl Lundberg said it felt like “licking a nine volt battery or like popping candy”.
“You get lines and shapes of things, it sees in black and white so you get a two dimensional image on your tongue, it’s a bit like a pins and needles sensation,” he said.
“It’s only a prototype, but the potential to change my life is massive, it’s got a lot of potential to advance things for blind people.
“One of the things it has enabled me to do is pick up objects straight away, I can reach out and pick them up when before I would be fumbling around to feel for them.”
Link to story (with video). -via Arbroath
Link to BrainPort Technologies.
Every year, prosthetic options for amputees get better. One recent improvement is a flexible foot, currently in development at the University of Michigan. It recycles the energy of motion, making it less tiring for users to walk longer distances:
For amputees, what they experience when they’re trying to walk normally is what I would experience if I were carrying an extra 30 pounds,” said Art Kuo, professor in the Univ. of Michigan departments of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering.
Compared with conventional prosthetic feet, the new prototype device significantly cuts the energy spent per step.[...]
Based on metabolic rate measurements, the test subjects spent 14 percent more energy walking in energy-recycling artificial foot than they did walking naturally. That’s a significant decrease from the 23 percent more energy they used in the conventional prosthetic foot, Kuo says.
“We know there’s an energy penalty in using an artificial foot,” Kuo said. “We’re almost cutting that penalty in half.”
Link via Make (which has information about other advanced prosthetic feet) | Image: Steve Collins, University of Michigan
Neatorama has featured a number of stories about animals who have received prosthetics before, including Beauty the Bald Eagle, who lost her beak when it was shot by a hunter. WebEcoist has a great collection of these stories including many you probably haven’t seen yet.
Life isn’t easy for a long-legged wading bird with only one leg, but this one got help to live a relatively normal life. A stork named Dietmar has become the world’s first stork with a prosthetic wooden leg. The stork is under the care of a bird sanctuary in Saxony, Germany. Medical specialists crafted a new limb after sanctuary workers raised a £1,000 to finance the venture.
“He gets on very well in the sanctuary with his new leg but he can’t live in the wild any more so he’s here with us for the rest of his days,” said keeper Rolf Arensberg.
Nancy Dickenson of Ocate, New Mexico and her stepdaughter Martha found an 11-month-old calf on a neighbor’s ranch that was suffering from severe frostbite. The black angus heifer had lost the use of her back legs and hooves. What to do? Obviously, the answer is to give her prosthetic legs!
The Dickensons have rescued dozens of animals and wanted to give Meadow a chance to walk normally again. They located the calf’s owner and bought Meadow, and convinced veterinarians and students at Colorado State University to help her.
Doctors amputated a portion of Meadow’s hind legs in August and fitted her with the prosthetics, a rare procedure done on livestock typically destined for the food supply. Meadow is believed to be the first bovine calf fitted with double prosthetics, Colorado State veterinarian Dr. Robert Callan said. He based his claim on discussions with other veterinarian clinics and schools.
Nancy Dickenson said the family decided to pay what she expects will cost “thousands of dollars” for the procedures because Meadow has become another family pet.
Meadow is no longer in any danger of becoming beef. Link -via Fark
(image credit: Colorado State University)
Her injuries haven’t stopped her from living: she’s been teaching blind children life skills. “Life is what you make it,” she said.And now she and her partner, Jeffrey, who’s also blind, are raising their 2-month-old baby boy, which leaves no time for self-pity. “Just because you have a tragic thing happen in your life, it doesn’t mean that your life is over,” she said.
Wolverine has his retractable claws, but real-life technology is catching up with comic book super heroes. Dvice lists eight awesome things you can implant into your body. If someone could have all of these, they would rival any pop culture super hero! Shown is a prosthetic speech implant, which can turn your thoughts into audible communication.
In the future: Turn a prosthetic speech implant up to 11 and you’ve got yourself a sonic scream, à la Banshee. Make it waterproof and you’re just as “super powered” as Aquaman Sammy “Squidboy” Paré. Special throat mics already allow for sub-vocal communication, but implants would take that a step further, perhaps facilitating the ability to speak where we normally wouldn’t be able to.
Andre chewed off his front left and rear left paws to escape an illegal trap he encountered in Alaska. He then lived for weeks hiding under a camper shell. The Shepherd-Rottweiler-Lab mix was taken in by Alaskan Dog and Puppy Rescue, who contacted a company named OrthoPets to see if they could help. A year later, Andre has received his prosthetic legs in Denver, Colorado. Martin Kaufmann of OrthoPets says Andre stood up just two days after his new legs were attached.
“This is the first time that Andre has been able to stand on four legs in over a year and a few months now, so it will be an interesting challenge as he learns, instead of having to survive with two legs how he can actually thrive on all four,” said Kaufmann.
For a second he hesitated, and then Andre hopped up and started running around like any dog with four legs would.
“It’s just such an amazing moment to see this guy who’s learned how to be very adaptive on two legs and watch how fast he’s able to go back to four legs. Just feels good to see he’s able to be normal again, such a proud moment,” Kaufmann said.
Andre will go up for adoption in a few weeks. Link -via Arbroath
Ellie May Challis of Little Clacton, Essex, England battled meningitis as an infant. She recovered, but her arms and legs had to be amputated. She has since used normal prosthetic legs which were were painful and slow. Now five years old, Ellie has new carbon framed legs, the kind amputee sprinters use.
She was fitted with them three weeks ago – making her the youngest person in the world to have the £10,000 a pair special limbs.
Paul Challis, 45, said: “Ellie can walk twice as fast on these new legs. She is so full of determination.”
The company’s managing director Bob Watts said: “We had to make them especially for Ellie as they had never been made this small before. We were worried that she wouldn’t be able to balance properly on them, but she has made amazing progress.
Ellie’s legs will be replaced every two years as she grows. Link -via Arbroath
