I don't see "rights for cockroaches" picking up mass support.
This is an animal we purposefully kill by the thousands upon thousands just because they're annoying.
This is an animal we purposefully kill by the thousands upon thousands just because they're annoying.
> The spokeswoman insisted that the insects are treated humanely and that the backpack - first developed in 2011 - does not harm them.
Boring a hole in the head, and then another hole in the chest, and then clipping the antennae, so you can attach an apparatus which appears to roughly half the size of the roach itself and which exerts major control over its motion, does not approach "humane". Anyone found doing this to humans could very reasonably be lynched.
I'd prefer to see the company own it. To repurpose an argument I first saw on that bastion of philosophical thought cracked.com, "Cockroaches? Fuck 'em." Focus on the scientific potential of remote-controlled cockroaches.
Cockroaches have no rights that man is bound to respect. [1] There are no conceivable benefits to extending them any rights. And I'm not particularly worried that a child who grows up thinking of insects as something to be used or abused as they see fit will mistreat humans. I burned ants with a magnifying glass. It didn't seem to bother anyone. I went on to burn my sister's name into a block of wood as a gift. That's pretty much where things ended.
If a child of mine showed any interest in this sort of thing, I'd be happy to sponsor it.
The article actually made me wonder whether the cockroach lives through installation; I have read that cockroaches "live on" for a period of weeks after being beheaded. It would be really, really cool to get something like this that
- didn't prevent other cockroaches from accepting the bugged one
- didn't block the roach from fitting through gaps it would normally be able to fit through.
- included a highly miniaturized video camera
> It's the reason people put sickly pets down, rather than letting them suffer for months.
People are generally (there might be exceptions) more attached to their own pets than they are to other people's cockroaches.
[1] http://www.acslaw.org/acsblog/no-rights-which-the-white-man-...
According to the article and the instructions[1] there is only one hole and it is in the thorax (through the exoskeleton), which is the middle section and not the head at all (remember from primary school biology, insects have a head, thorax and abdomen).
Not making a case for or against this method or product, just saying.
> sandpaper is used to remove the waxy coating on the shell of the insect's head.
I interpreted the waxy coating as being something that was part of the head. Could be wrong.
Chitin is the arthropods version of keratin (the stuff your hair and nails are made of).
There are other, more logical, reasons to be outraged if that is your position on this.
> If they wouldn't grow back (no idea whether that applies to the cockroaches or not), I'd feel much worse.
The waxy surface will not grow back, well not if they do the more ethical approach as they would only perform this on mature cockroaches who will not shed any longer.
Again, not supporting or attacking their approach. I think the purpose seems to be the ethical grey area for me. For instance, the black rhino is considered extinct (last I checked) and how we save the white rhinos is by removing their keratin horns to stop poachers. Am I happy we have to do that? Certainly not, however, I'd rather have that then no white rhinos.
That is only the case if it has the concept of suffering. Does it?
> Criticism: This enables and encourages kids to harm animals
> The cockroach is anesthetized during the surgery to avoid the risk of the cockroach experiencing pain (though it is debatable whether they experience pain at all), and the cockroach adapts to the stimulation rapidly. The 55 Hz stimulation we use is the same frequency used in electrical stimulation to treat human diseases such as Parkinson's.
What happens in the labs must stop. And one of the sure way to do it is to not let children to grow into torturers.
About 6% of the world population is Buddhist. That's about 350m people who believe cockroaches have rights.
EDIT: mr_luc and thaumasiotes point out my obvious error!
That's like saying that the billion or so nominal Christians are anti-war, because the canonical Christian writings are clearly anti-war, and particularly 'pure' devotees may preach it, and a few may take a principled stand against it ... but in practice, Christians go to war in large numbers. (Exactly like Buddhists, I might add).
In general, the little Laotian mother trying to keep her house clean is not too concerned about the rights of cockroaches.
Like most religious adherents, most Buddhists essentially pay a class of professional adherents to be devout, so they don't have to be. :)