> I can enclose a raspberry pi in a fake duck and it will fulfil the above criteria, and perhaps from a distance it can be mistaken for a duck, but it has practically nothing to do with ducks. At the same time, it might be enough if our objective is to make some low cost garden decorations :)
Agreed, it depends on what data you want out of the simulation. If you want to see how your dog will react to a duck, maybe it's good enough. If on the other hand you want to see how a duck will react to getting poked, well... your raspberry pi is worse than useless.
Assuming a dog only cares about how a duck sounds and not how it smells. We know that wouldn't work for other dogs. Which brings up something about simulating other animals. They're not human, and likely have sensory experiences that differ from our own. Perhaps a nematode worm is simple enough that we don't have to worry, but a dog or a duck are complex enough that we might leave that part out of the simulation. Or just not know how to fully simulate dog olfactory processing.