We received our Pleo this week, and resisted the urge to take him apart-- but only briefly.

We immediately bonded to the little dinosaur. This was the most difficult take apart we've ever done. Disassembling inanimate iPods is one thing, but Pleo was more. Ah, Pleo-- we hardly knew you.

Warning: This guide is not for the squeamish. If violence to robotic creatures causes you emotional distress, stop reading now.

The obvious place to begin disassembling any organism is the belly. Pleo has two screws on each foot.

The battery compartment is in the middle, along with the the USB port and SD slot. There's also a debug port hidden underneath a cover next to the power switch.

Pleo came with a USB cable, but it's not clear what it's intended for. Ugobe's instructions for add-ons like their Holiday behavior require a SD card and reader.

Once we removed the feet, we cut the glue affixing the skin to the legs.

Pleo is quite the sophisticated creature. According to Howstuffworks, he has:

• Two 32-bit ARM7 processors
• Four 8-bit processors (ARM?) for motor control
• Fourteen tiny motors

Removing the skin from the head. Ugobe used glue around each orifice to keep the skin secure, so this is trickiest part.

Pleo may be the most interactive toy ever made. He has:

• One color camera
• Two microphones
• One IR transmitter
• One accelerometer
• Eight capacitance touch sensors

Removing glue around his eye.

The color camera in his nose. Ugobe may have originally planned facial recognition, but currently Pleo can only use it to "get a feel of his surroundings."

He also sports binaural hearing with a microphone on each side of his head. The microprocessor compares the sounds received from each "ear" and allows him to work out the direction and distance of sound sources.

An infrared interrupter in his mouth lets him know if you have placed something in there. There is also an IR communicator which allows him to talk to other, like-minded dinosaurs.

Removing the skin from his legs and torso. The skin is elastic enough that the entire body section can be removed as one piece.

Stretching the skin around his rear legs.

Pleo's skin is loose over most of his body, but there are stiff plastic frames surrounding the ports and battery bay on his belly.