Well its seems that the days of the computer mouse are numbered. Aardvarks, it seems, are the pointing device of choice, well at least amongst children.

Studies by Economic & Social Research Council show that children in the 4 to 8 age group seem to take it for granted that a toy could communicate with a computer.

The aardvarks in question, Arthur and his sister DW, have a vocabulary of some 4000 words on their own, and 10,000 words when used with the computer. They have motors so that they could move, and a ROM chip so that they could respond to actions by children such as squeezing the hand, toe or ear. Dr Plowman of ESRC says

We found that children can co-ordinate the multiple links between toy and screen and don't appear to get confused. In fact, when it came to the unique selling point of the interaction between the computer and the toy, children rarely thought this anything special.

It seems that one thing that cheesed the children off was if it talked for too long. Don't you just hate it when your aardvark just won't shut up?

Read more about the reasrch here.