Scientists have developed small robots that can fool cockroaches into thinking they are part of the gang. The "robo-roaches" have pheremone molecules on the them and are programmed to interact with real cockroaches. I gather the researchers think we'll soon we'll be able to have our own pied piper of cockroach-land, rounding up all of these horrible buggies so that we can finally go ahead and get rid of them.
I'm all for getting rid of roaches - they Really. Are. Gross. And they can carry diseases all over your nice clean counters in the middle of the night without you knowing.
To me, the creepiness of this announcement has nothing to do with the insect aspect and everything to do with the controlling communities of animals thing. One of the researchers was quoted as saying:
"It would be interesting to build our own intelligent societies of animals"
Yeah. And then - I know, we could build our own intelligent societies of people. And they would be modelled after MY vision of the way the world should be - MINE, Mwahahahahaha...
Besides, these animals already have "collective intellingence" - it's what the researchers are modelling and without it, this project would never have worked. I don't really get why us taking control of the collective action of the animal group makes it more "intelligent".
It just makes us more in control - and that is not the same thing. [KEYWORD in above quote: "our". Oh, now I'm getting all militant about how we want to control the earth and everything in it. Better stop typing NOW before this really goes off the rails]
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