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An impressive performance by Jelle Atema (photo below) and a shark |
Imagine being in the skin of a shark! You would move silently through the water, sense electric fields, catch scents, and seek out prey in the darkness of the deep for hours…
This is what may happen in the near future, thanks to electrodes implanted in shark brains. Indeed, engineers funded by the US military have developed a device that can remotely control the electrical impulses emanating from a shark’s brain to manipulate its movements and even… decode what it is “thinking”!
Numerous research teams around the world have received ethical committee approvals to create devices that observe and control the actions of various creatures. Consequently, scientists hope to gain a better understanding of the interactions between animals and their environments to discover solutions to human limitations.
The Pentagon is very interested in these experiments. The US military aims to exploit the natural abilities of sharks by remotely controlling them, transforming them into a type of stealth agent capable of tracking enemy ships without detection. The program is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under the Department of Defense.
The primary technique involves implanting electrodes into the shark’s brain to stimulate active regions. As a result, Jelle Atema, a biologist at Boston University, has been able to control spiny dogfish sharks (about 1 meter long, typically found at the ocean floor). A radio signal is sent via a computer to an antenna attached to the shark. The electrical impulses stimulate either the left or right side of the olfactory center—the part of the brain that processes smell—and the shark will turn left or right as if it has just detected an intriguing target. The stronger the signal, the sharper the turn!
Atema’s team is not the first to attempt to “drive” animals. John Chapin, from the State University of New York, has used a similar process to control mischievous rats in a pile of rubble. The implant stimulates a part of the rat’s brain, causing it to move in the direction that the researcher finds “interesting”!
When achieving this, Chapin rewards the rat with a “treat” by stimulating the pleasure center! With this system, he has trained a rat to remain still for 10 seconds when it detects RDX, a component of… explosives! The New York Police Department plans to recruit Chapin’s rats to intervene in emergencies such as confirming bomb locations or finding people buried under rubble.
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Control diagram for rats by John Chapin |
Scientists working on the DARPA project aim to program a microprocessor to observe and decode various activities of animals and determine whether what they are sensing is seawater, a scent, or an electric field.
Tim Tricas from the Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology also uses implants to understand the types of information hammerhead sharks receive, thanks to their electroreceptors. These are saltwater-filled sacs scattered under the skin of the shark’s jaw, connected to special nerve endings, making the shark highly sensitive to changes in electric fields. Tricas uses these sensors to detect the electric fields emitted by a hidden prey.
Biologists believe that sharks also use these electroreceptors to navigate. They can swim in a straight line for thousands of miles without knowing the ocean floor, which is illuminated only by light from the surface. In reality, they maintain their direction thanks to the Earth’s magnetic field, with their electroreceptors acting as a compass!
According to Tricas, the only way to verify this hypothesis is to observe sharks’ electrical sensing abilities in nature. DARPA also plans to go beyond this experiment. According to Professor Walter Gomes from the Submarine Research Center in Newport, Rhode Island, the next phase of research involves implanting electronic devices into blue sharks before releasing them into the sea off Florida. They will use radio waves to communicate with the sharks.
Gomes states that the US Navy has radio stations on ships capable of communicating with sharks within a 300km radius! Scientists have designed sensors shaped like pilot fish (a type of fish that often swims alongside sharks for food) to reduce water resistance when attached to sharks. They are also focused on ensuring that the experiments do not harm the sharks.
The duration of the experiments is also limited so that the sharks do not become exhausted. Remote-controlled sharks offer significant advantages over other types of underwater reconnaissance robots. They are completely silent and can fend for themselves without the need for care and feeding…
TRUNG LÊ
