Chinese Scientists Create “Remarkable” Cyborg Rats – Video

Wooo! Time for another update in SKYNET WATCH – the place on Ransom Note where we like to monitor humanities giddy rush to create a class of robotic overlords. This month; China. According to Futurism.com Chinese scientists have managed to create a new breed of cyborg rat that is able to navigate through mazes with remarkable speed and "impressive efficiency".

From Futurism:

"To create the cyborg rodent, the rat was implanted with electrodes in the brain and mounted with a wireless micro-stimulator on its back. The study notes that the goal was to illustrate how rat cyborgs are able to “expedite the maze escape task with the integration of machine intelligence.”

"The computer-aided rats were compared to individual, regular rats measuring things like steps, coverage rates, and time-spent solving the maze. The results showed that the computer allowed the rat cyborgs to communicate, and it aided the rats in figuring out the shortest path they should take to complete the puzzle, steer clear of dead ends, as well as find their way through loops."

"Note that the computer wasn’t controlling the rats remotely; rather, it was giving the rats hints that were designed specifically to help them make the best decisions in terms of direction and strategy."

Outside of fervently hoping the poor little bastards don't escape and lead rat kind to some sort of revolutionary assault on humanity (which, considering their treatment wouldn't be entirely unwarrented), what do we think about this set up? Well, the cyborg rats are something of a breakthrough when it comes to linking computer and biologocial intelligence – we're guessing that if it works on rats then some bright spark in Washington is, right now, wondering how much it'd cost to stick one of those headsets in a grunt's brain. Supersoldiers here we come!