Researchers Remotely Control Cockroaches With Electronic Backpack

[Pinkamena]

Damn, I knew they were doing tests and shit on remote controlled insects/animals, but I didn't think that they'd actually managed to make a working version for roaches. This is kinda cool, really.

Can we stop torturing bugs like children and work on curing AIDS or something?

Shockingly enough, Electrical Engineers aren't that great at the whole 'Curing of diseases' thing. Even more shocking though, is that despite the Electrical Engineers 'torturing bugs', the Medical Researchers, Pharmacologists and Virologists working on AIDS cures are completely unaffected.

The beautiful thing about having a fuck-ton of scientists working on many projects at once is that one group can 'like children' while the other groups do... whatever the fuck it is they want to do.

Thank you for missing the point and taking my comment literally. It was funny.

But seriously, I'm sure this is indeed the best way for them to spend time and money. Torturing insects is hella awesome.

You seem to believe that cockroaches are able to feel fear the way we do. There's your problem.

 

[OniaPL]

Man, every thread that has Boudica in it always turns into such a riot.

OT:
I'm kind of torn between this. I know and understand that the cockroaches don't really feel or perceive the world in the way we do and therefore it is not torture, or horrifying captivity for them, it still bothers me on some strange level. I hate cockroaches as much as the next person, but the fact that living beings are controlled with electricity and forced to do our bidding still makes me slightly uneasy.

Still, this sounds extremely interesting and will probably have a lot of different useful applications.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

I think it's funny to see all this : Omg it's so wrong.

On the other hand anyone who said the sentence has squashed dozens of bugs themself.

 

[MidnightSt]

Can we stop torturing bugs like children and work on curing AIDS or something?

interestingly/funnily enough, this technology works on a principle directly opposite to torturing - afaik, it first sends an impulse that creates literally a "need" or "longing" to go somewhere (basically "i feel i should turn left/right"), and if the bug does that, it then stimulates its pleasure centers, so the bug feels a wave of good and happy feelings after obeying.

-_-

Yeah, not so much. Not so much at all.

The wires attached to the cerci, the sensory organs on the roach's abdomen, are used to scare the roaches into thinking a predator is coming from behind, causing the bug to move forward. Meanwhile, the antennae wires are "electronic reins" that cause them to think they've come in contact with a physical barrier, steering them in a different direction.

Unless you consider fear a synonym for happy and predator and barrier synonyms for longing.

oh, okay. Half a year ago I've watched presentation from TED about similar technology that used the stimuli I wrote about. I guess there's many ways to achieve the same thing. And yes, I should've read the OP before assuming it was the same as the one I knew about.

(captcha: way to go donny!) :-D

 

[OniaPL]

I think it's funny to see all this : Omg it's so wrong.

On the other hand anyone who said the sentence has squashed dozens of bugs themself.

I understand that very well, myself; If I see a cockroach, no doubt I will instantly crush it. I suppose for me it boils down to the ethical question of whether it is right or wrong to control a biological being through such methods.

I do agree that it is foolish to say that "This is wrong" or not, but there are still clear ethical dilemmas here if we look past the cockroaches. More than the cockroaches themselves, it is about controlling a biological being through such means.

 

[felbot]

i think they already did this on rats actually, though then they made them feel really good for doing what theyre told.

 

[the December King]

Hmmm. I don't want to take away from this experiment's findings, but perhaps if the roaches could also be monitored somehow for their general health... I know this is going to sound pathetic, but the thought of running them to death so we can know stuff kinda makes me sad.

Lol, this post actually made me laugh out loud.

I kill cockroaches when I get the pest control guy out to spray my house, I also step on them every time I come across one.

Making them work for us is a step up.

P.S they are not animals, they are under animals

Well, if you have an infestation, I can see how your attitude might be different. But 'working for us' isn't quite the same as 'enslaved and jolted'. Again, I'm aware that we are talking about bugs, but it still rattles me a bit.

P.S they are animals. Bugs, true, but still animals.

 

[TriGGeR_HaPPy]

Hmmm. I don't want to take away from this experiment's findings, but perhaps if the roaches could also be monitored somehow for their general health... I know this is going to sound pathetic, but the thought of running them to death so we can know stuff kinda makes me sad.

Lol, this post actually made me laugh out loud.

I kill cockroaches when I get the pest control guy out to spray my house, I also step on them every time I come across one.

Making them work for us is a step up.

P.S they are not animals, they are under animals

Well, if you have an infestation, I can see how your attitude might be different. But 'working for us' isn't quite the same as 'enslaved and jolted'. Again, I'm aware that we are talking about bugs, but it still rattles me a bit.

P.S they are animals. Bugs, true, but still animals.

Pretty much this.

I understand practically every point made in this thread, and I can see where everyone is coming from. There's still something about this which doesn't feel right for me is all...

 

[mdqp]

But seriously, this is actually amazing - they've already said something about helping find people trapped by Earthquakes with this, and utilizing the cockroaches Archeologists could probably get around to finally fully exploring the Egyptian Pyramids they've been dying to do for a few years, but couldn't as current cameras are too bulky, slow or threaten to damage the structure with their movements.

Meanwhile, the Torturing insects point of yours... isn't really that big a point. The Cockroaches don't feel pain in the same way that people do (instead of a central nervous system, they have nerve endings on the outside of their carapace that are photosensitive - why they run away when you turn on the lights. Internal pain doesn't register due to... well, lacking a central nervous system); and, had you read the source article, you would have noticed that the process doesn't actually cause the Cockroach any pain; rather, the system plays a 'trick' on the cockroach, directing it's own natural functions (flee from predator response, which is just an organ that registers air movement around the cockroach) and the 'reins' of the cockroach mimic the pulses the roaches own antenna generate when it touches a solid object. It's not Torture, more a simple deception - once the machine is turned off, the Cockroach returns to normal, no mental scarring or crippling injuries whatsoever.

And, before anyone jumps in with the whole 'I wouldn't want to be in that position', I'd just like to point out - Cockroach brains are completely different to human brains in structure; while studies on whether or not they are Conscious have so far been inconclusive, the odds of them having similar emotions or states of mind equivalent to a complex being are astronomical. Hell, the reason this experiment probably worked so well is due to the Cockroach being a) unable to perceive what was going on and b) the fact that they were playing on it's instinctual reactions, which drive everything Cockroaches do.

Just quoting because this is well put together. People that think a cockroach can be home for something more complex than "hungry->search for food!" and "danger->run away!" doesn't sound like he/she knows a lot about those insects. Also, I guess that everybody trying to "defend" the cockroaches are at least vegetarians, as it would sound hypocritical, otherwise (the animals we eat didn't have any freedom, often they are raised in conditions of minimal space/comfort... And of course we eat them and we kill them, something that wouldn't happen to these cockroaches, at least not on purpose).

 

[TrevHead]

I'm not to fond of wireing electrodes to bugs either, it's still an animal with a brain right?

While i'm all for using animals for the greater good It's a slippery slope from this to putting a stop button on Pit Bull Dogs or working dogs or even murderers and peidophiles

 

[C F]

First off: creepy. Completely and utterly unnerving.

Now that that's been established, I do have some questions. How much does it cost to produce and hook up each one of these units? Are the packs re-usable, or will a new pack have to be made in the event that a roach dies and needs to be replaced? Is this something that is feasible for large-scale search-and-rescue deployments? Could we use them in irradiated areas? As I recall, cockroaches are fast little buggers. When do we begin our RC-Cockroach races? What is the smallest mountable projectile launcher we have? Do cockroaches dream of insectoid sheep? Are they Bluetooth compatible? Can a roach's eyes see why we love cinnamon toast crunch? Am I ever going to feel remorse for forcing such inferior and pathetic creatures into slavery for my own gain? Probably not, they're little more than biological computers! Nature's janitorbot has been re-purposed into our spy drone!

 

[Groenteman]

Its people that fail to see the difference between an insect with the mental capacity of a pocket calculator and other, vastly more complex creatures that will be the least use in one day determining where to draw the line for how far we should take this sort of technology.

I like animals as much as the next man but its these people clamouring about cockroach rights, or lab animals used for research that likely ended up saving several people (and/or animals) they hold dear, make it very hard to for anyone that matters to take even the valid arguments seriously.

Lines like 'Can we stop torturing bugs like children and work on curing AIDS or something?' writes you off instantly as either ignorant or incapable/unwilling to understand. Nobody is going to listen to that.

Edit: also glad im not the only one who thought of roach races hehehe.

 

[BlazeRaider]

Hmm, there seem to be a lot of people that think this type of technology will be implemented on humans but... isn't it already? This cockroach controller seems to operate on making the roach 'want' to move in a certain way, which is very similar to this device,


It's actually kinda funny we did this for humans before we did it for cockroaches.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Can we stop torturing bugs like children and work on curing AIDS or something?

Anyone who makes this statement, be they the janitor or the president, and isn't joking around about it, demonstrates a lack of understanding of basic concepts of science, engineering and ethics. Namely:
1. Electronics isn't medicine
2. Potentially saving lives isn't in any way, shape or form behaving like children
3. Stimulating the nerve cells of an organism that cannot feel pain and understands the world in a very different way is in no way, shape or form related to the human notion of torture.
This is not opinion, nor am I trying to express it as opinion. The following, however, is:

In other words, how presumptuous of you to insult people who are doing humanity a favor by deriding them out of your inflated sense of self-righteousness and your misunderstanding of insects' nervous systems. And when people try to show you how you're wrong, you turtle up and take the "I don't like your attitude" stance completely ignoring anything they might be trying to tell you and instead attacking their completely justified reactions to your silly behavior. At the moment you are no better than a 12 year old youtube commenter, closed to any kind of rational discourse and just trying to proclaim moral superiority over your "opponent" in a meaningless passive-aggressive war. You are not the person you consider yourself to be.

Man, I'm so gonna get banned for this.

EDIT: oh, forgot to point out the irony of you accusing me of asking loaded questions when you yourself began posting here with one.

I think it's pretty neat and useful, and we totally should us but... c'mon dude, s'fucked up to essentially mind control another living thing. Remove the fact it's something as insignificant as a cockroach, it's something that's alive. And one of the ways we're controling it is by making it feel like it's being under constant attack by predators.

s'fucked up man. You KNOW that means the entire time that cockroach is thinking "Oh Shit! Birds gonna eat me! Ahhhh! FUCK! WHY SO MANY WALLS! Boy I'd like to rest and eat.... AHHH! FUCKING BIRDS ARE COMING FOR ME!"

 

[AdamRBi]

This is really cool.

I mean, with all we know about insect "hivemind" properties this could lead to an effective method of pest control.

But, on the subjects that people of the thread seem to enjoy;

What makes you people think that scientists working with wireless transmitters and insects can just turn a corner and start curing deseases? That's like asking a game developer to direct a movie. They can, but there are other guys doing it better and that's not what their focus is.

Also, Cockroaches are organisms that just react to stimulus; not the same as higher creatures who's information processing is more advanced.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-SI_clrCcQAo/UEt9Ofz1ayI/AAAAAAAAC5s/FmSpeu1KJPc/s400/dawwroach.jpeg

No, stop! Don't look at me like that! I didn't mean you! I'M SORRY!!

 

[SnakeoilSage]

Can we stop torturing bugs like children and work on curing AIDS or something?

Seriously. And fill in a few potholes while you're at it, would you? Way throw grant money around.

 

[O maestre]

i need to get several roaches with backpacks somehow divide them into two and let them fight each other in an epic battle. In miniature scale of course... at least until the shrink ray and its opposite counter part are invented