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It’s the Matrix, but for locusts.

Tom Scott | October 18, 2024



At the Department of Collective Behaviour, part of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, researchers are putting locusts into simulated worlds, both virtual and physical, in the hope that they can figure out how devastating swarms form and move. ■ About the Centre: https://www.exc.uni-konstanz.de/collective-behaviour/ https://www.ab.mpg.de/couzin

Edited by Michelle Martin https://www.youtube.com/@OnTheCrux
Thanks to David Walter for the suggestion

This is the most uncomfortable I’ve ever felt while filming, for a few reasons. First, of course, because of the locust swarm itself. Second, because animal research — even on creatures as simple and pestilent as locusts — always raises ethical questions. Now, the researchers are careful with the locusts, and I don’t think many people could have a problem with this. Indeed, most of the world currently has zero ethical restrictions on insect experimentation — but it’s still worth interrogating whether this is okay. And finally: because if we can do this so easily to less intelligent creatures… what’s to stop something more intelligent coming along and doing the same to us?

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Written by Tom Scott

Comments

This post currently has 46 comments.

  1. @TomScottGo

    October 18, 2024 at 12:00 pm

    This is the most uncomfortable I've ever felt while filming, for a few reasons. First, of course, because of the locust swarm itself. Second, because animal research — even on creatures as simple and pestilent as locusts — always raises ethical questions. Now, the researchers are careful with the locusts, and I don't think many people could have a problem with this. Indeed, most of the world currently has zero ethical restrictions on insect experimentation — but it's still worth interrogating whether this is okay. And finally: because if we can do this so easily to less intelligent creatures… what's to stop something more intelligent coming along and doing the same to us?

  2. @josephgarza4389

    October 18, 2024 at 12:00 pm

    Sometimes we forget that these environmental phenomena are still at work within our world when we only remember this happening in history. Spreading awareness of this issue will certainly inspire farming researchers to explore this issue.

  3. @RevelationOne

    October 18, 2024 at 12:00 pm

    Did this dude just say eating insects is becoming an important aspect for humans? So WEF Klaus Shwab meant it when he said we will eat zhe bugs and it isn't just a conspiracy no more?

  4. @williamdiffin28

    October 18, 2024 at 12:00 pm

    As if the locusts haven't noticed that they're in a laboratory. As if the privileged so-called researchers can ever learn anything meaningful about locusts' behaviour by torturing them i.e. whilst having no empathy with them at all. As if their qualification is ever founded on anything beyond being incapable of empathy and thereby able to happily persecute defenceless creatures. The only reason they do it is because they're not allowed to persecute defenceless human beings yet.

    I think that subsistence farmers plagued by locusts will be as little impressed with these crude irrelevant experiments as the locusts themselves.

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