The “planes don’t flap their wings” argument
turns out to be even less convincing for computer systems: animals
make use of innate capabilities, robots rely on compiled programs.
Many AI roboticists often turn to the biological sciences for a variety of
reasons. Animals and man provide existence proofs of different aspects of
intelligence. It often helps a researcher to know that an animal can do a
particular task, even if it isn’t known how the animal does it, because the
researcher at least knows it is possible.