Locusts Watching Star Wars

lewko writes: "Scientists discovered that locusts have a large nerve cell in their brains known as the Giant Lobular Movement Detector. This is what allows them to fly in swarms by the thousand without banging into each other. To monitor the brain signals, the researchers designed plasticine restraints for the insects and put them in front of an edited version of Star Wars which shows battle sequences. "Essentially, we made little armchairs for them and stuck them in front of TV screens," said Dr Rind. Of course this doesn't seem to stop them going bammo into my windshield... Or maybe that's just the depressed ones?"

Comments

Neat!

[Elendur]

Transformed into couch potatoes, when the locusts were shown footage of a Empire fighter or Millennium Falcon hurtling towards the camera they sent out brain signals via their detectors to swoop away from the danger.

With scientists at the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich, the research team has designed an electronic circuit to mimic the locust's behaviour. It has already been fitted to a small robot and made to avoid collisions.

The result of this is that when your car detects a locust on a collision course with itself, it will suddenly swerve off the road, or even better, into the 18 wheeler in the next lane.