Most likely, everyone has seen the photo of a dog trying to make love to a robot dog, right? The photo went viral on Reddit, Instagram, X, and other social platforms. But, as expected, it is fake.
The New York Fire Department first posted the original photo on Facebook back on April 18, 2023. As you can see, there is no live white dog in it — only a woman and a robotic dog.
It’s not entirely clear who first made the photoshop, but it appeared on the Firefighting subreddit on April 19, 2023, just one day after the original was published. Other users on various platforms virally shared the collage, making it difficult to determine who actually created the joke.
The original photo attracted attention because the New York City Fire Department has a robotics unit that is used in search and rescue operations. That day, the robot was used during the partial collapse of a garage building in Lower Manhattan.
«Robot dogs or drones can stream video directly to our phones, directly to our command center. This is the first time we’ve been able to look inside a collapsed building to try to get some information without risking the lives of our firefighters,» New York City Fire Chief John Esposito told reporters shortly after the events.
But all of this data does not answer the question of whether a dog can actually do this. Dogs are known for attacking other creatures or even objects for lustful purposes, but nothing is known about actual cases of such attacks on robot dogs.
Source: Gizmodo