Hooray! It's time for our collaboration with the What is it? blog - can you guess what this strange contraption is for?
Place your guess in the comment section - no prize this week, so you're playing for fame and glory only. For more clues (and more guessing fun), check out the What is it? blog.
Update 7/25/08 - the answer:A trap for taking live animals, the top and bottom both collapse, making the height just a couple of inches. It's placed in a shallow stream, when it's tripped the animal's leg is caught, after the top expands the leg is released and the elevation apparatus is activated, raising the trap several inches above the water. It's called a Gibbs Armadillo trap because of how it looks, but it was used for catching live muskrats so they could be transported to another area, patent number 1,765,144.
Congrats to SoLo who got it right first!
the funny design is because its designed to fold it together for storage reasons!
This was a mail-order observation science toy when I was a kid. The spiders always arrived dead in the package and you had to collect new ones from around your home. The new ones never stayed put and you'd wake up at night with them crawling on you.
But the question remains, is it used to trap armadillos, or is it called that because it looks like an armadillo?
Those things are freaky o.o
/obligatory
They ain't good eatin' like opossum or squirrel
"Its called that because It looks like an Armadillo, It was actually used to catch muskrats alive. It was only made between 1925-1930 by the Gibbs Trap Co., they are bulky and It was not realistic to try and carry a dozen of them Into the marsh. Today they are a must have for collectors and are highly prized In any collection. The term "armadillo" Is slang and caught on In the later years by collectors, It was manufactured and sold as the 'Gibbs live muskrat trap.'"
:D