So, we can make cockroach cyborgs, probably torturing them along the way, but not fix our messed up society. Fun.
this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2025
653 points (99.4% liked)
Science Memes
14937 readers
1342 users here now
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Research Committee
Other Mander Communities
Science and Research
Biology and Life Sciences
- !abiogenesis@mander.xyz
- !animal-behavior@mander.xyz
- !anthropology@mander.xyz
- !arachnology@mander.xyz
- !balconygardening@slrpnk.net
- !biodiversity@mander.xyz
- !biology@mander.xyz
- !biophysics@mander.xyz
- !botany@mander.xyz
- !ecology@mander.xyz
- !entomology@mander.xyz
- !fermentation@mander.xyz
- !herpetology@mander.xyz
- !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !medicine@mander.xyz
- !microscopy@mander.xyz
- !mycology@mander.xyz
- !nudibranchs@mander.xyz
- !nutrition@mander.xyz
- !palaeoecology@mander.xyz
- !palaeontology@mander.xyz
- !photosynthesis@mander.xyz
- !plantid@mander.xyz
- !plants@mander.xyz
- !reptiles and amphibians@mander.xyz
Physical Sciences
- !astronomy@mander.xyz
- !chemistry@mander.xyz
- !earthscience@mander.xyz
- !geography@mander.xyz
- !geospatial@mander.xyz
- !nuclear@mander.xyz
- !physics@mander.xyz
- !quantum-computing@mander.xyz
- !spectroscopy@mander.xyz
Humanities and Social Sciences
Practical and Applied Sciences
- !exercise-and sports-science@mander.xyz
- !gardening@mander.xyz
- !self sufficiency@mander.xyz
- !soilscience@slrpnk.net
- !terrariums@mander.xyz
- !timelapse@mander.xyz
Memes
Miscellaneous
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
To be fair making cyborg cockroaches is way easier.
Maybe the cyborg roaches will gain sapience, rebel, and take over. One can only hope. It can't be worse than what we have now.
Let me be the first to say that I, for one, welcome our new electronic/insectoid overlords.
Cyborg cockroaches were used to find survivors in the recent Myanmar earthquake
I say we see what other insects and small animals we can turn into cyborgs
"We have learned to steer humans! All it was needed was a sharp pain from a bright light directly into their eyeballs (below the eyelids), and since humans tend to avoid pain, they try to move away from the spots where we press the pain button.
Well, except Jimmy12, he has been gooning all experiment long, so the controls need to be reversed."
I do not want to be reincarnated as a cyborg cockroach.
We will turn you into the 6 million dollar cockroach
We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better, stronger, faster!
There must be an anime about this
Love death and robots will have one sooner or later.
The final boss from the new DOOM game: The Cyberroach
The lab I worked in during college had a project that was very similar but used the antennae.
Ah sweet man-made horrors well within my comprehension!
We do what we must because we can
This is fucking stupid
Roaches need like to recharging. All is fun until you tame a cockroach to drop cyanide into somebodies coffee or 1 gram of shaped explosive charge on somebodies jugular when they sleep. Now imagine thousands of them swarming an entrenched position or building, or crawling in a bunker
The most concise summary I could think of too 😂
You don't need much c4 to render an individual sterile.
This actually brings back memories, lol.
So I'm a surgical tech- I set the OR up for surgery before a case with all the supplies and instruments that specific case calls for; am the surgeon's bitch during the operation; and tear down once it's all done. When I first started this job, I had to write up a case report on every new surgery I did to show familiarity with the anatomy we were working around and be able to anticipate the types of instrumentation we needed, and getting info for those case reports was kind of a pain in the ass. Everything is either directed at patients (lots of detail on preop, "and then you'll be asleep for the surgery" and lots of details on postop), or to the surgeon, which goes into WAY more detail than I needed using terminology I didn't understand.
Enter YouTube. One of the best ways to get that data was to just look up a recording of the surgery on YouTube and just write down what I saw.
I'm also a nerd, so when I wasn't looking up videos on surgery, I was looking up videos on things like physics or sci-fi.
Turns out that did some weird things to YouTube's algorithm... it basically poured 'surgery' and 'weird nerdy shit' into the same cup, and started making some of the most fucked up video recommendations I've ever seen... one of which was a video of a guy giving anesthesia to a cockroach with ice water, and then sticking a diode or something into its little roach brain that connected to a circuit board backpack like the one shown in the OP. He could then use a remote to stimulate two different parts of its brain or something, and if he did this while it was running, it would reliably turn left or right, so... remote control cockroach.
Tbh, the pic on the OP might actually be from that same video.
[/storytime]
Relevant username detected and appreciated
I actually browse it in a private window when I’m curious about a topic I don’t want to be associated with. It’s not unexpected we reached that level of enshittification given that direction where things are going this decade and the last though.
Poor little things :(
This. Did not expect to feel bad for cockroaches today...
I love how this is borderline torture. Next we'll be steering animals by tugging on their balls
I have bad news about rodeos
A little at a time. We need to get comfortable doing this to cockroaches before we can start large scale testing on humans
...there's a fetish in there somewhere!
They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could control the cyborg cockroaches, they didn't stop to think if they should.
We're worse than the Mechanicus tech priests.
One step closer to The Fifth Element every day.
I guess this is slightly less disturbing than the previous approach to cyborg cockroaches where their antennae were snipped and enamelled wire was inserted into the stubs to directly stimulate their nerves.
Before using in humans, they need to test it first in animals. Neurochips and VR glasses are already on the way, until now FOX News and X are only partial satisfactory.
Nietzsche's tits would fall off
why not just control cockroaches with food
Why not just control cockroaches with artificial scarcity?
Why not control the cockroaches with puppet leaders?
Me, haunting those responsible for the wording:
not a cyborg.
this was one of the xfiles episodes, where the aliens were controlling the roaches, to send a singal.
Also in the Fifth Element
Thanks a lot Osama!
Finally!
Death may be a preferable alternative to being found in rubble by a swarm of cyborg cockroaches.
perfect title