Tiny Camera Implants Turning Insects Into Spies
According to this week's New Scientist, the future of spying may rest in the hands (or legs) of insects and rodents. In an attempt to build the ultimate super(small)spy, moths, beetles, rats, pigeons and sharks have been installed with electrodes, batteries, and even video cameras.
"[A moth] may look like an innocent visitor, irresistibly drawn to the light in your room, but it could actually be a spy -- one of a new generation of cyborg insects with implants wired into their nerves to allow remote control of their movement."
These mechanized animals (read: cyborgs) have plenty of advantages over traditional robots. Sharks, moths and rats, for example, have an amazing sense of smell that allows them to detect the faintest traces of chemicals. And if humans can figure out how to hide the controls within the creature's bodies ... well, they would become perfect spy.
Man, the future is gonna be awesome(ly apocalyptic and scary).
From DailyMail
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
DD @ Mar 9th 2008 10:59AM
Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Whatever happened to ethics?
Blayne Bosse @ Mar 9th 2008 4:42PM
Makes a literal meaning of the expression "to be a fly on the wall"...
George @ Mar 9th 2008 5:03PM
Maybe we can see what really happens inside the whitehouse now
undrgrndgirl @ Mar 9th 2008 6:30PM
ethics? what? are you kidding? dd, you're Sooo quaint.
our only hope is that the bugs won't cooperate...and why sharks???
brad @ Mar 9th 2008 6:35PM
I guess a flyswatter would now be considered a national security threat?
Teri @ Mar 9th 2008 6:42PM
This does not surprise me at all according to the way the world is going with RFID chipping and technology. The Bible says knowledge shall increase in the latter days.
asohf @ Mar 9th 2008 8:11PM
They should use these with bees to see why they're disappearing... but that would actually be something useful.
Bill W @ Mar 9th 2008 9:07PM
Ethics with a fly!? Give me a break. Cameras in flies will make the little bothersome beasts useful. Sounds like a good plan to me.
Lon Horiuchi V @ Mar 10th 2008 12:50AM
Good thing DDT's on the way back.
Fuck YOU Big Brother!
Gibb Roberts @ Mar 10th 2008 4:50AM
Oh great, now we can get close-up video of piles of shit.
babycakes @ Mar 10th 2008 9:18AM
so will using an insecticide or going fishing be considered terrorism?
Benjamin Wright @ Mar 10th 2008 12:30PM
People are not legally powerless against automated snoops. They can publish contract terms of service that forbid or limit unwanted spying from bots and cyborgs. http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2008/01/robot-surveillance-contracts.html
mark mikel @ Mar 12th 2008 5:44AM
Hey, McFly...anyone home up there?...McFly?
joe b @ Mar 12th 2008 10:41AM
3/12/08
Veterinarians insert micro chips into pets (via injection) for purpose of identifying lost or stolen pets.
It's only a matter of time before mandatory school shots for our children and routine flu shots, and immunizations contain dust sized chips which will be used to report our identity, our location, alcohol and drug level, hormone level, ph, blood surgar level, oxygen level ,pulse/blood pressure --maybe even electronic information on our brain. The next step (if we're not already there) is to electronically stimulate an individual or an army or a city of population in order to cause a particular mass reaction: e.g. complacency, cooperation, anger, fear, sleepy or listlessness. All that needs to be done is to dial up the desired frequency, aim it at the necessary population and zappo! you have biological and psychological control.
This is some pyscho, wacko, far out thought?
Remember: Just 50 years ago Dick Tracey's
(comic book detective) wrist watch two way radio was considered science fiction, and now there are more cell phones than there are people. Incidentally, 50 years ago sputnick was already looking down at us.
--joe
ps: they might want to inject an identification chip in every body at birth so we can indentify bodies in an air plane crash, 9-11 type disaster, soldier bodies in battle, proper burial and exhumation records.
Lee @ Mar 13th 2008 11:55AM
Hey, my next door neighbor has a million roaches, he said he'll let him have them if he comes to get them.
music_wings_angel @ Mar 14th 2008 2:01AM
yeah.. I had the idea.. and now look someone goes and steals it.
I guess If you have ideas you need to keep your big mouth shut if you want money for it.
Anyway, now look.. they have it made. Just like the license plate scanner.. Does someone have a camera on me or what???
homeboy2294 @ Mar 16th 2008 12:31PM
cool
Jewell Davis @ Mar 17th 2008 2:20PM
Oh look at the screen " A WINDSHELD at 60 MPH! "
splat
dizzyyet0227 @ Mar 17th 2008 8:52PM
now all the bugaphobs and the people who feel like they are being watched all the time are in the same boat
Minnie Harreld @ Mar 28th 2008 10:33PM
lol, Is that why that wasp flew out from around my computer yesterday! And it went out thereafter O Well. Seriously tho, this implanting can be deviced to be reckoned with; after all consider those inside spys with access to these spying insects