Here’s a year-end tiny collection comprising a cow and lots of cockroaches.
The cow is mechanical, caught here on video (Thanks to Rachel Ehrenberg for bringing it to our attention):
The University of California supplies this description:
Cow: the digestive system’s complex mysteries:
Nova Jiang is an artist and UCLA alumna who makes work that connects different fields and encourages audience participation. One of her recent projects was done for the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum. ‘Cow’ is an interactive mechanical wood sculpture that kids can place a ball in it’s mouth and watch it travel a simplified version of the digestive cycle.
The cockroach is mechanical, too, but only in the sense that any living animal is a mechanism and any dead one a broken or de-energized mechanism. Rockefeller University aims to, in its words, DNA barcode the American cockroach (Periplaneta americana). Savor their goal and their thoughtful approach, if you will, by familiarizing yourself with The National Cockroach Project: