remote contolled cockroach anyone?

www.engadget.com/2006/03/15/darpa-solicits-bids-for-insect-cyborgs/

PETA supporters take note, because DARPA has just revealed plans for expanding its ever-growing army of animal soldiers: armed attack dolphins, spy turtles, and remote-controllable sharks could soon be joined by swarms of sensor-laden surveillance insects in monitoring, attacking, and generally confusing our enemies, if the advanced research agency's latest bid proposal proves successful, according to the BBC. Would-be submitters must be able to fabricate MEMs that can be implanted into bugs at the pupa stage for integration into biological systems during development, and must prove that they can guide their creations to within three meters of a target from a minimum distance of 100 meters. Independent scientists contacted by the BBC were skeptical about this project at best -- citing both the difficulty in remotely gathering data from such small sensors as well as in coaxing insects to do anything besides eat and mate -- with reactions running the gamut from "fiction" to "wacky" to "ludicrous." That's DARPA for you- always spending our tax dollars with thoughtfulness and efficiency.

awesome. do the sharks come with freeking lasers on thier heads?

btt day crew

Recently, probably on space.com, I read about a wasp that stung its prey twice -- once with a special poison to allow the wasp to control the prey, and then again for some other purpose (paralyzing it, maybe?).  The control poison destroyed certain braincells in the prey insect and caused its behavior to change.  The wasp implanted an egg or eggs into the prey insect and abandoned it to be eaten alive.

This differed from the usual "wasp implanting eggs" story in that the biologists had discovered that the wasp had evolved a specific poison tailored to changing the prey's behavior in a way that would benefit the wasp.

Anyway, I don't see much reason we wouldn't eventually be able to implant a chip into an insect's brain to steer it around.  Sounds like a nifty R/C project.

New idea:

R/C cockroaches loaded with semtex (sp?).  Run the sucker into the targets bed, and BANG!  Dead badguy...

Quoted: New idea: R/C cockroaches loaded with semtex (sp?).  Run the sucker into the targets bed, and BANG!  Dead badguy...

or have it crawl up from the toilet plumbing and wait for the badguy to sit