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Backyard Brains Can Help Satisfy Your Inner Frankenstein (Video)
Did you know that cockroaches have such large nerves in their legs that you can poke into their legs almost at random and hit a nerve with an electrode so you can stimulate that leg with hip-hop music and and watch it move? And that you can easily order the parts to do this at home or at school? You can. And supplies to perform many other neuroscience experiments, too. Amaze your friends! Learn how neurons work! Gross out squeamish people! All that (and more) is what Backyard Brains is about.
Sticking an electrode into a creature and have it twitching to music is not funny, it's cruel.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Didn't Dexter get started with stuff like this? In 20 years there will be some kid suing /. because he read this article and turned into a serial killer.
sudo make me a sandwich
At first the animal lover in me was wondering about the ethics of randomly cutting apart cockroaches without any clear scientific benefit outside of learning (at least dissections tend to teach more than one person - disclaimer, I was on a human subject review board for scientific studies at my college). However it looks like they go out of their way to actually keep everything humane. And, its also important to note that the cockroaches are anesthetized, and their legs do in fact grow back. They get a thumbs up!
It looks like you can order this stuff and have it shipped to Europe: http://backyardbrains.com/Order.aspx
It looks like there are plenty of customers from around the world: http://backyardbrains.com/Contact.aspx
Did you know that nerds have such large deficiencies in their brains that you can post Slashdot articles almost at random so you can stimulate that advertising revenue with advertisements disguised as badly edited articles and watch them squirm? And that you can easily order the editors to do this at home or at work? You can. And supplies to perform many other psychology experiments, too. Amaze your investors! Learn how marketing works! Alienate your readers! All that (and more) is what Slashvertisement is about.
We just don't have the size cockroaches you have. And using cats or dogs is often frowned upon.
I know it has yet to be tested, but it works.
Congradulations, you've won our dictionary definition word of the day!
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
can we repeat this experiment with the leg of a PETA member?
No, unlike roaches, PETA members lack the functional nervous system required for this to work.
Put at least SOME effort into making the submission not appear to be an advertisement (even if it is one).
Shameless articles about torturing animals (even insects are beneath this) and astroturfing posts cheering them on. Wag of the finger, site I used to love...
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Title: Backyard Brains Makes Educational (and Fun) Bioengineering Lab Kits
Description: Their motto is "Neuroscience for Everyone," and they mean it!
00:00) TITLE
A shot of Rob Rozeboom sitting at a small table appears with the SlasdotTV logo bar reading "Slashdot Editor Rob Rozeboom".
00:00) Rob
If you're a fan of Frankenstein but have worries about villagers chasing you with pitchforks and torches, the folks at Backyard Brains have science kits for you.
00:08) TITLE
The SlashdotTV title sequence appears with the title Backyard Brains and two small photos of electronics mounted to insects.
00:12) TITLE
A view of a guy at a group desk with various computer screens and tools appears.
00:12) Guy
To all those out there on the interwebs listening to me and thinking "When is this guy gonna show us the inventions already?",
00:17) TITLE
The SlashdotTV logo bar fades in and out of view identifying this guy as "Backyard Brains Co-Founder Timothy Marzullo".
00:17) Timothy
The reason I can talk fast and hopefully talk about interesting things or boring things is because I have neurons.
Neurons are electrochemical devices - cells - and it's hard to monitor the chemical secretions - the neurotransmitters - because they happen in very small spaces, you need powerful microscopes and fluorescently tagged molecules, but the electricity that a neuron generates is easy to... well, easier to monitor due to this magical invention which is allowing all the listeners to watch me and it's called the transistor.
We all know due to the magic of the PN- and NP-junctions and creative uses of capacitors and resistors, we can make amplifiers and even computers.
00:58) Timothy
So what we have here are cockroaches and these are [...]
01:03) TITLE
The view zooms in on the box of cockroaches
01:03) Timothy
[...] muy especial cockroaches
- viven en el bosque de Sudamerica - they live in the rain forests of South America.
One of the reasons cockroaches are so fast is they have very large neurons in their legs. [...]
01:16) TITLE
The view zooms back out
01:16) Timothy
[...] These very large neurons are quite easy to record from.
Now, we want to treat the cockroaches in a humane fashion, so we need to anesthetize them and so, uhm.. did you bring your halothane with you, in addition to your camera?
01:31) Rob
No..
01:32) Timothy
The propathol?
01:33) Rob
No... I
01:34) Timothy
The pentobarbital?
01:35) Rob
I might have a fifth of Jack in the car, but..
01:38) Timothy
Yeah, yeah.. so we could actually use that for the earthworms, but for the cockroaches we're just gonna use.. this is relatively old technology that probably doesn't excite the people at Slashdot that much, but when water goes below a certain temperature it undergoes a phase change in terms from a liquid to a solid, and so what we have here is ice, in water, and so we're gonna put the cockroaches in the ice water [...]
02:03) TITLE
The view zooms in on the cup of ice water
02:03) Timothy
[...] and after a minute or two that will chill them out and anesthetize them.
02:06) Timothy
I'm actually allergic to cockroaches because I've been working on them for about two years.
I used to work in a rat lab, then I got allergic to rats, so I moved to cockroaches, now I'm allergic to cockroaches, so I'll have to move to.. maybe jellyfish and sea anemones next.
It's a constantly.. I'm constantly fighting this battle between creatures.
02:25) TITLE
Timothy grabs a cockroach and puts it into the ice water.
02:25) Timothy
So these are.. they live in the rotting trees of the Amazonian rain forest, and I'm jut gonna dunk 'm into the ice water.
And because these are cold-blooded, he can't mod.. regulate his own body core temperature and after a minute or two, he'll slowly.. he'll begin to move slower and slower and then we can do our exp
You can't say something works without testing it, you can only guess.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
A human analog is irrelevant. Humans are not analogous to cockroaches in this way. Humans feel pain through nociceptors. Cockroaches don't have these.
Besides that Humans can feel horror and misery that a brain as simple as a cockroaches almost certainly cannot. They do not have higher emotions and higher functions. They don't even have memory. Whatever it is like to be a cockroach, it is almost certainly nothing like what it is like to be a human.
Thanks for a needed dose of common-sense.
Crazy, misinformed environment activists (as opposed to reasonable, educated environment engineers) speak as if animal life was just as dignified as human life.
Newsflash: it isn't. Humans have far greater intelligence, are self-aware, and have free-will. While animals (specially mammals) should not be needlessly mistreated, they aren't to be treated as humans either.
If an economic project needs to put down an hectare of trees, it should be permitted unless it will harm humanity (through the destruction of environmental resources) or if the economic benefits are very small.