海角大神

How鈥檚 this for rebranding? The locust, commonly known as a pest and a bad omen, might someday avert disaster.

The Office of Naval Research is awarding Washington University professors a three-year, $750,000 grant to develop bomb-sniffing locusts 鈥� a surprising alternative to current explosive detection animals, which include dogs and dolphins.

Why locusts? They have a remarkably sensitive olfactory system, thousands of times more complex than the best chemical detection devices available. So rather than attempt to engineer a similar system biomedical engineer听Barani Raman decided to harness the original.

鈥淲hy reinvent the wheel? Why not take advantage of the biological solution?鈥� he asked in a press release. 鈥淭hat is the philosophy here. Even the state-of-the-art miniaturized chemical sensing devices have a handful of sensors. On the other hand, if you look at the insect antenna, where their chemical sensors are located, there are several hundreds of thousands of sensors and of a variety of types.鈥�

James Traniello, an insect behavior ecologist at Boston University who is not affiliated with the research,听agrees that locusts' sensory abilities combined with their small size could make them a valuable addition to military work.

"I do think that insects could have advantages due to their small size, making them听difficult to detect and more effective in entering spatially restrictive areas,"听says insect behavior ecologist James Traniello in an email to 海角大神.听"Some insects fly, others walk, each mode of locomotion having potential advantages as detection tools. Some insects are known for their extraordinary chemical sense, ability to be trained to recognize odors and patterns, and other sophisticated cognitive skills. Some have remarkable navigation abilities, and may be able to search, detect, and return."

Dr. Raman, who specializes in biological olfaction, has worked with locusts for years. In previous studies, his team demonstrated that locusts could recognize specific odors even in complex, multi-scent environments.

鈥淚t took only a few hundred milliseconds for the locust's brain to begin tracking a novel odor introduced in its surroundings,鈥� Raman told the BBC. 鈥淭he locusts are processing chemical cues in an extremely rapid fashion.鈥�

Researchers can use locusts to identify chemical traces by surgically implanting sensors in a locust鈥檚 brain and decoding the neural activity as it 鈥渟niffs.鈥� According to The Washington Post, Raman鈥檚 team plans to connect the sensors to a tiny transmitter 鈥渂ackpack,鈥� which would send neural information back to a receiver. An LED light on the receiver would then flash red for explosives detected or green if the coast is clear.

But unsurprisingly, bugs are hard to train. That鈥檚 where fellow Professor Srikanth Singamaneni comes in. Dr. Singamaneni, who studies soft nanomaterials at Washington University, will work to create 鈥渢attoos鈥� to guide the locusts to their targets. These 鈥渢attoos鈥� 鈥� actually biocompatible silk attachments 鈥� can generate mild heat. By attaching them to locusts鈥� wings and adjusting the heat on either side, researchers could steer their insect by remote control.

The experimental use of live animals also comes with thorny ethical questions.

The idea of living, remote-controlled insects was explored in 2013 when an educational company called BackyardBrains began marketing commercially available 鈥渃yborg cockroaches.鈥� RoboRoach is a 鈥渄o-it-yourself鈥� surgical kit that allows students to control the movement of a cockroach subject via smartphone app. While some praised the product for encouraging interest in neuroscience, others considered it inhumane, Science Magazine reported. A year later, PETA successfully petitioned to have the app removed from the Google Play store.

This isn鈥檛 the first time the US military has enlisted help from the animal world.听Rats, dogs, dolphins and elephants have all been trained to detect explosives. Amid promises to wean off the practice, many military branches听still use pigs听in combat training 鈥� by injuring them and requiring soldiers to provide rapid care.听Despite advances in technology, some still favor using real biological systems over engineered solutions.

鈥淭he canine olfactory system still remains the state-of-the-art sensing system for many engineering applications, including homeland security and medical diagnosis,鈥� Raman said in a press release. 鈥淗owever, the difficulty and the time necessary to train and condition these animals, combined with lack of robust decoding procedures to extract the relevant chemical sending information from the biological systems, pose a significant challenge.鈥�

Locusts may be more suitable for the warfare in other ways.

While the sentience of insects is still being studied听鈥� last year, Caltech researchers found that flies experienced "fear-like" emotions听鈥� the use of bugs on the battlefield will likely prove less controversial than the use of larger animals.

"I assume that if sacrifice is involved, there will be fewer ethical concerns with insects than vertebrates," Boston University's James Traniello says. "There is an overarching concern about using any animal in warfare, although those that are less sentient, like insects, will likely draw less attention."