Engineer builds robotic legs for snakes so they can walk, shares video on YouTube

A US-based YouTuber and engineer Allen Pan created a robot system that helps snakes to walk, says wanted to “give snakes back their legs”. Here’s the story.

Snakes are one of the scariest reptiles you will find around the world. People fear almost everything about them - their hiss, their crawl, their long body. Everything about them makes us vexed. Now imagine this long reptile has four legs too?

An engineer Allen pan created a wacky robot that allows snakes to walk. Although the idea of snakes getting legs is weirdly odd and scary, the snake driving in a four-legged robot is a whole level of bizarreness.

He created the robot using a long tube and four plastic legs connected to a controlboard. A snake can be seen riding the four-legged robot while chilling in the transparent tube.

Notably, Pan took the idea for the invention from the western three-toed skink (Chalcids striatus), a species of lizard with four tiny legs. That’s when he decided to end the ‘FOMO’ of snakes having legs. “They might be the closest thing I could find to an actual snake with legs,” Pan said.

Well, that’s too much wild Jurassic fantasy. Isn’t it? Interestingly, snakes do have legs. More than 150 million years ago, snakes used to roam on the earth with legs just like their close cousin lizards. But then the evaluation happened with time and their anatomy got mutated.

Interestingly, the body of the robot is designed in such a way that a snake can enter the tube to ride the four-legged vehicle and can leave whenever they want. Pan himself shared that he wanted to ensure that snakes “could choose to put on or take off”, ethically avoiding violence towards the creature.