Genetically Engineered Big-brained Mice

StefanJ writes "'Are you pondering what I'm pondering Pinky?' An item on MSNBC reports that researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston have produced mice with big, convoluted brains by inserting an single extra gene. I am reminded of two pieces of SF: Olaf Stapledon's novel Sirius, about a lab experiment that produces a brainy dog, and Bruce Sterling "Our Neural Chernobyl," in which the country is overrun with cunning coyotes and tribes of raccoons."

Comments

One small step for human kind..onegiantleapfordogs

[Hadlock]

Huzzah! Bring in the Data Dogs! Ein* rocked.

I wouldn't mind a smarter dog...
*From Cowboy Bebop

Why were they killed?

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

from MSNBC: IT IS NOT yet clear whether the mice are smarter -- they were all killed soon after birth

Um, why did they do that? Did the scientists just give the mice an X-ray and say "OMG THESE MOUSES ARE SO FREEKIN SMART EWWWWWWW I DONT WANT SMARTY-SMART MICE SQUISH IT SQUISH IT SQUISH IT!!!!!!!!!!!" and then they all stood on top of lab chairs waiting for their spouses to squish the brainy mice, (but of course they had to settle for the building custodian)?

Look, I'm just guessing, okay?

Just imagine...

[zenyu]

If they gave this to a dolphin or a whale which already have larger brains than us, but presumably don't have our overabundance of the magic protein.

Or our nearest neighbors like chimps and gorillas... Though I think it would be more interesting to give it exclusively to Bonobos, they'd probably write some interesting erotica ;)

Manic Mice

[ThereIsNoSporkNeo]

They said that the mice were "Killed soon after birth"... what they didn't say is that they were killed after leading a bloody rebellion that culminated in a tense showdown in the lab, with one of the engineered mice holding a poisoned needle to one of the researcher's throats.

Luckily they were able to calm down the miscreant with a piece of cheese, and lured him far enough away from the researcher to turn him into a bloody splot on the (otherwise spotlessly clean linolium) floor.

Back to you Bob.

please not now

[Tablizer]

Oh great!

First it was H1B's from India, Pakistan, and China. Now we have to compete with smart mice also.

Shudduv been a dentist like Mom warned.

Arthur always was a little confused about the mice

[schmaltz]

"Earthman, the planet you lived on was commissioned, paid for, and run by mice. It was destroyed five minutes before the completion of the purpose for which it was built, and we've got to build another one."

Only one word registered with Arthur.

"Mice?" he said.

"Indeed Earthman."

"Look, sorry - are we talking about the little white furry things with the cheese fixation and women standing on tables screaming in early sixties sit coms?"

Slartibartfast coughed politely.

"Earthman," he said, "it is sometimes hard to follow your mode of speech. Remember I have been asleep inside this planet of Magrathea for five million years and know little of these early sixties sit coms of which you speak. These creatures you call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are merely the protrusion into our dimension of vast hyperintelligent pan- dimensional beings. The whole business with the cheese and the squeaking is just a front."

The old man paused, and with a sympathetic frown continued.

"They've been experimenting on you I'm afraid."

Arthur thought about this for a second, and then his face cleared.

"Ah no," he said, "I see the source of the misunderstanding now. No, look you see, what happened was that we used to do experiments on them. They were often used in behavioural research, Pavlov and all that sort of stuff. So what happened was that the mice would be set all sorts of tests, learning to ring bells, run around mazes and things so that the whole nature of the learning process could be examined. From our observations of their behaviour we were able to learn all sorts of things about our own ..."

Arthur's voice tailed off.

"Such subtlety ..." said Slartibartfast, "one has to admire it."

"What?" said Arthur.

"How better to disguise their real natures, and how better to guide your thinking. Suddenly running down a maze the wrong way, eating the wrong bit of cheese, unexpectedly dropping dead of myxomatosis, - if it's finely calculated the cumulative effect is enormous."

He paused for effect.

"You see, Earthman, they really are particularly clever hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings. Your planet and people have formed the matrix of an organic computer running a ten-million-year research programme ...

"Let me tell you the whole story. It'll take a little time."

"Time," said Arthur weakly, "is not currently one of my problems."