Cockroaches, or roaches for short, are more or less the pariahs of the insect world, even though they are most definitely going to survive and perhaps even thrive in a post-nuclear world compared to us humans, but for the moment, our homes seem to have the upper hand – after all, we have all sorts of aerosol sprays and roach traps to get rid of those pests, no? As for others who have an interest in roaches such as this bunch of high school kids in Cooper Union’s summer internship program, they decided to run experiments on 15 imported Central American roaches in an effort to complete their neuroscience research project. Obviously, I can’t say that no roaches were harmed in the project, but then again you won’t see any picket lines form in defense of these bugs.
According to Cooper Union physics professor, Robert Uglesich, this group of students removed part of the cockroaches’ antennae, replacing them with wires instead. This has resulted in cyborg roaches that are capable of receiving signals from of all places, a toy controller. Not only that, these “enhanced” roaches are also able to receive other stimuli including music. Using Lady Gaga’s tunes and translating them into electric signals, the roaches started dancing around – and without any booze, yo!
I wonder just where will this project lead in the future – remote controlled roaches by the military to infiltrate enemy bases?
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