Cyborg Insects

September 19th, 2015

Via: Vice:

I asked Anthes why she thought the military was so keen to work with insects. “I’d imagine there are several reasons,” she said. “Firstly those creatures are simpler to work with, biologically speaking. It’s much easier to commandeer an insect’s nervous system than a dog’s or a human’s. But also, for the specific applications they were imagining, I believe they wanted small, inconspicuous animals.”

The reasoning behind their call was also similar to that behind the Acoustic Kitty decades earlier: technology piggybacking on an already-living, remote control “insect drone” would be easier than building a robot from scratch. In this case, the creature would have the advantage of natural flight.

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