Thursday, March 02, 2006

Sharks = Spies?

Engineers funded by the US military have created a neural implant designed to enable a shark's brain signals to be manipulated remotely, controlling the animal's movements, and perhaps even decoding what it is feeling.

More controversially, the Pentagon hopes to exploit sharks' natural ability to glide quietly through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails. By remotely guiding the sharks' movements, they hope to transform the animals into stealth spies, perhaps capable of following vessels without being spotted. The project, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), based in Arlington, Virginia, was presented at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, last week.
Too cool. Before you start thinking Jaws, or Deep Blue Sea (or Austin Powers) we are talking about a spiny dogfish and then maybe a blue shark. No Great Whites. But cyborg sharks monitorable by sonar is still way cool even if they don't frickin lasers on the top of their heads

via New Scientist via Defense Tech: Sharks

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't like the idea of turning into living robots. If they want them as spies they should just train it, just like they did with dolphins to deliver mail to underwater places. Also there is evidence that sharks as smart and can be trained, and for those who said sharks are dangerous your more likely to be killed by man's best friend (dog, though for me it is more like man's worst enemy), a coconut, a bee sting, lighting, machines and by your own surf board than a shark.

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