Shark droids?

Is it ethical to stick electrodes into animals brains to make them carry out our whims? Apparently anything is ethical if it could potentially lead to the discovery of new treatments for diseases and other negative heath conditions. We know DARPA for being the agency that created ARPANET, the first node of the Internet, but recently they've been experimenting with creating a kind of marine zombie. They implant electrodes into the brains of a spiny dogfish and use a radio transmitter to stimulate either the right or left side of the brain responsible for the sense of smell. The dogfish responds by turning in that direction, hoping for some food. Just like a remote control boat, but better!

The Pentagon is funding research into neural implants with the ultimate hope of turning sharks into "stealth spies" capable of gliding undetected through the ocean.

British weekly New Scientist has published the research, which builds on experimental work to control animals by implanting tiny electrodes in their brain that are then stimulated to induce a behavioural response.

"The Pentagon hopes to exploit sharks' natural ability to glide quietly through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails," says the report.

"By remotely guiding the sharks' movements they hope to transform the animals into stealth spies, perhaps capable of following vessels without being spotted." (ABC).

Why build expensive underwater robots to do dangerous things like recovering landmines from the ocean floor when we can just use a remote control to get an octopus or something to do it for us? What's more, if the world's sharks and other marine nasties are busy chasing enemy vessels and performing other chores for the USA armed forces then at least they won't be biting legs off of swimmers at Bondi or attacking surfers on the West Coast.

Image courtesy of Mark Rosenstein
Categorised as: nature
Technorati Tags: sharks, Pentagon, neural implants, DARPA