Christmas Toy: Remote controlling a live cockroach with your smartphone

This is not a joke. The company Backyard Brains will sell a kit to mount acockroach alive. This kit allows you to control the movements of the cockroach with electrical pulses controlled from a smartphone application. Of course, the sale of such a toy poses ethical problems. But before you scream, watch the video ...

Backyard Brains had already played with cockroaches in of a TEDx conference . Its founder Greg Gage had made a lighter version of his toy. He connected a speaker to the audio of a cockroach leg to leg it moves to the beat of the music.

The kit will be available by the end of the year, kids can "drive" a cockroach using a deviceBluetooth implanted in the brain of the insect. Gage says that insects do not suffer during these experiments, and they can continue to invade our pipelines once the cybernetic implants were removed. But some believe that children playing with this kit will learn to devalue life and treat animals like machines.

RoboRoach is presented as an experiment in neuroscience to make at home that allows children to create their own insect "cyborg." After a summer campaign on Kickstarter , Backyard Brains has raised enough money to produce their kit.

In November, Backyard Brains should send its first kits in the United States.For $ 99, you have a live cockroach, the microelectronic equipment, surgical kits and handled by children from 10 years.

Obviously, everyone has not jumped for joy at the news. Gage and Marzullo, co-founder of Backyard Brains, are both neuroscientists and engineers.They say the purpose of their project is to trigger a "neuro-revolution" to inspire children and they do their job later. But for others, such as Michael Allen Fox, professor of philosophy at the University of Kingston, Canada, this project conveys a different message: "encourages fans to operate invasively on living organisms" and "leaves suggests that complex living organisms are mere machines or tools. "

This toy has at least the merit of opening the debate and ask ethical questions about the biology increased. If today we are talking about cockroaches, tomorrow we'll talk about fish, and the day after humans. But at this point it will be too late to ask such questions. Is this a good or a bad place at the disposal of all this kind of experience? Personally, I do not know. But if you have an opinion, I want to hear it.

sourcesBackyard Brains Via Science