Stealth Sharks to Patrol the High Seas

dylanduck writes ""Imagine getting inside the mind of a shark: swimming silently through the ocean, sensing faint electrical fields, homing in on the trace of a scent." That's what the Pentagon wants to do, says New Scientist. By remotely guiding the sharks' movements using a newly designed neural implant, the military hope to transform the animals into stealth spies."

Comments

Wonderful

[slavemowgli]

Ah, man: never encumbered by second thoughts about exploiting animals for warfare. Sometimes, I really think "homo arrogans" would be more appropriate (and often quite literally, actually) than "homo sapiens".

Re:Wonderful

[Anonymous Coward]

Using a swimming appetite embodied as a spy, or as a "herd dog" for commercial fish, will aid in keeping large feral predatory hunters farther from the patrolled areas. Sharks are strongly territorial, so let's breed BIG remote-controlled sharks and stop hearing about so many human/shark interactions in the surf. Would be a lot better for the sharks than the backlash from a single breakwater bite.

There's someone in my head, but it's not me

[Anonymous Coward]

"That team is among a number of groups around the world that have gained ethical approval to develop implants that can monitor and influence the behaviour of animals, from sharks and tuna to rats and monkeys."

Lovely. And in another 10 years they'll tell you that you can't travel abroad without one of those implants.

Who shells out these "ethical approvals" anyways?

This is what I want as an american.

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

As an American, I don't want lower taxes, better public transportation, or *gasp* national health care. No, I want to connect to sharks with VNC. What a fucking country.

Re:This is what I want as an american.

[Gulthek]

What are these benefits that only we Americans get, exactly? I think I missed that day in civics.

Re:This is what I want as an american.

[TheWickedKingJeremy]

Talk to the Canadians about how great national healthcare is...they love waiting 1-2 years for treatment.

Is that what Bill O'Reilly told you they do?

Look at the facts... Canada has a higher life expectancy (which is also rising at a faster rate) and lower infant mortality rate than the United States does. The United States has 40 million people without healthcare, and yet Americans spend a higher percentage of their income for healthcare than the Canadians do (because their system is so much more efficient than ours). Also, studies have shown that care received on both sides is more or less equal (assuming you have healtchare if you are American)...

There are problems with Canada's system, no doubt, and yes I have read about the occasional horror story of Person X waiting Y time for Z procedure. But you could cherry-pick a horror story from here in the U.S. as well. That is not a good way to judge the merits and problems with a healthcare system as a whole. Look at the big picture... we spend more, for less. Simple as that.

Re:This is what I want as an american.

[Politburo]

I don't trust the govt to manage something that important

Well, I don't trust corporations to manage something that important. Looks like we have a problem. Also, you don't trust the government with health care.. what about the military and other national security matters?

Also, limiting the max awards (mostly punitive) on malpractice suits would help too.

Nope. Where caps were put in place, there was no positive effect on the cost of malpractice insurance or medical care in general.

"In states with caps, the median annual premium went up by 48.2%, but, surprisingly, in states without caps, the median annual premium increased at a slower clip--by 35.9%."

"Do caps on medical malpractice damage awards hold down doctors' liability insurance premiums? The nation's largest medical malpractice insurer says they don't."

Americans, more discusting than russians by far..

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, doing that to a small helpless animal (cat), in the name of some really screwed up (screaming monkey) patriotic, robotic, cold-war/christianity holier-than-thou mentality makes me really sick...if they really wanted to see the jerks that could end the world with their partiotic mumbo-junbo bible-thumping pradigm, all they had to do, is: LOOK IN THE MIRROR sometime!.

No wonder we have tons of wars and we can look forward to group(a) screaming monkeys launching their spaced-based quantum particle/string field palanatiod disruper against group(b) islamic fundementalist states of the middle east in say, circa 2095 and we can all have a really cool blast of a time!! (remember to bring spf 9 million sun screen)

Maybe we can re-design the human race (tranhumanist future) so that we can engineer out all the aggressive/competitive/religious crap, things would be better and we would have no wars and no 911 etc, by believers agains non-believers. (religions such as islam really get me by essentially saying " belive in allah or die unbelievers".

This eally show me how primitive and intellectualy bankrup/stupid these religions are, can't anybody think for themselves any more? You do have a brain, you should use it from time to time.

Then maybe we could smarten up and not be so "god has given me the keys to the kingdom" and anthing/being who does not worship my certian imaginairy friends is not worthy of existience or entreance to my ideal fantasy world etc. etc.

Re:Give me a break!!!

[Nonillion]

I guess it's just beyond most human beings intellectual capacity to just get a fucking clue. This ranks right up there with the rest of the dumb fucking things our military does with innocent animals.
It's not *just* that people are dumb. They are. But they also don't *want* to know what they do to animals (or causes others to do to animals on their behalf).
For example, offer to show someone a short video of what goes on in an abattoir. Almost guaranteed they will refuse. Tell them you don't think eating meat is wrong -- you just want them to see what goes on for them to be able to eat that McBurger. See if they'd be willing (not even "curious", just *willing*) to see how the fowl are slaughtered. They won't do it -- they will almost always prefer ignorance, and they'll probably also get mad at you for "trying to ruin their day".

I agree, 100%. You know, I used to eat animals, I was the kind of guy who would smack his fist down on the table and say "I got to have my slab of dead cow!" But, all that changed forever when I watched an undercover video showing some of the most deplorable acts violence committed against an innocent sow on a pig farm in North Carolina. These guys were yelling and screaming expletives at her, beating her with pipe wrenches and gate rods, sexually molesting her with a steel rod. And then to add insult to injury, smashed her over the head with a cinder block, it was then they started to skin and dismember her while she was still alive. It was the most disgusting thing I ever saw, it was extremely painful to watch. Chickens are treated even worse, and cows fair no better than pigs. And as for China, dogs are routinely strung up by their hind legs and beaten to death, cats are callously tossed into vats of scalding hot water while fully conscious.

So I make no excuse for my disdain towards my fellow human beings let alone what our own fucking government does to animals.

Ethical

[Martin_2006]

"That team is among a number of groups around the world that have gained ethical approval to develop implants that can monitor and influence the behaviour of animals, from sharks and tuna to rats and monkeys."

Presumably the same body that granted ethical approval for that fine effort in Guantanamo Bay.