When Locusts Attack
Robert Coulthard writes: "http://biology.queensu.ca/~dawsonj/LocustCar/index.html
You've got to check this out!!! A friend of mine has designed a car that he hooks a locust up to. The little critter actually drives it! There's some pretty cool videos on the site that shows the thing in action." Somewhere, there's a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Insects getting all riled up.
Well, I think a lot of the stances taken by PETA are silly, but this does seem a little mean in the sense of kid-pulling-wings-off-fly mean. If there's a legitimate scientific goal ---
And... if you're wondering why... M.E.L. was built for the fun of it.
--- but in this case, there's not. Maiming animals for fun, even a lowly insect, is the kind of uncool behavior that makes it difficult for real scientists with legitimate and worthy goals to perform research. It's getting hard enough to perform experiments for things like life-saving medical research without thoughtless boobs like these autogenerating propaganda for the more reactionary elements within the animal rights movements.
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Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
It takes humans intensive effort to produce a vehicle that restricts the movement of a creature to two dimensions when it can normaly travel in three dimensions.
It sure would be a bizzare expierence to have your legs ripped off, electrodes stuck in, and finding yourself attached to a giant car, 10 times your height, which you could then drive by thinking about walking...
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
...swarms of locusts driving those huge harvesting machines across the midwestern US...
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
The researcher first tried using a female locust to drive the platform, but even after hours of trying they could not get her to reverse park properly.
The male locust is a far more accomplished parker and driver but unfortunately he and the platform have been lost as he was to stubborn to ask for directions back to the lab.