DARPA's zombie-shark trainer looking at non-military applications

Earlier this year we brought you news of an exciting DARPA-funded project whose goal was to take your common, household shark and turn it into a remote-controllable spy capable of gathering critical military intelligence such as the location of enemy mines and submarines. And sure enough, Boston University's Jelle Atema and his team learned how to crudely guide these kings of the sea using either electrical stimulation to mimic their natural neural processes or -- our favorite -- little gadgets attached to their noses that release delicious-smelling squid juice on cue. While Professor Atema was able to make a good deal of headway in his research, biologists still have a long way to go before they fully understand how sharks use odor stimuli to navigate, and DARPA funding ran out before any more progress could be made at BU: the zombie-shark project recently got sucked into the black hole that is classified military research. Despite the lack of support from Uncle Sam, however, Atema is eager to raise fresh funding in order to leverage his achievements into useful civilian applications; remote-control sharks could potentially be used to track fish populations, changes in ocean temperature, or chemical spills. But consider yourself warned: once we're able to lead these creatures around by the nose, so to speak, it's only a matter of time before some mad scientists (read: DARPA) equip them with bionic limbs, turning them into deadly, mythical land sharks; i.e. next time someone rings your doorbell and you hear a little voice whisper "candygram" from the other side, you'd better call animal control and then run like hell to grab that harpoon you keep in the attic. For more details about this project (but unfortunately, no mention of that land shark aspect we fabricated), check out the mini-documentary at the Read link...

[Via Defense Tech]

[Farris @ Dec 13th 2006 3:56PM]

Shall I be the first to say it?

"All I want are FRIKKEN sharks with FRIKKEN LAY-ZERS ON THEIR FRIKKEN HEADS!"

Come on, throw my a frikken bone here.

[Pete2525 @ Dec 13th 2006 4:13PM]

You mean like this?

http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2004/0405/gyo_page0528.jpg

[JON BLAST @ Dec 13th 2006 4:19PM]

Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. We'd just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes.

Didn't see the first shark for about a half-hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin' by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and hollerin' and sometimes that shark he go away... but sometimes he wouldn't go away.

Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn't even seem to be livin'... 'til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin' and your hollerin' those sharks come in and... they rip you to pieces.

You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks there were, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin', Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boson's mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist.

At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol' fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.

Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

[Mike @ Dec 13th 2006 4:23PM]

*LOL* LANDSHARK!

[brian Pope @ Dec 13th 2006 4:35PM]

Okay, thanks for the Jaws flashback....but show me the way to go home.

Seriously, though: this sucks. The more whacked-out creatures-as-weapons research we do, the more these animals will not be seen as 'innocent'. Several shark species have already become enadangered. Any coastal foreign power suspecting it's being 'spied on' by such a program, in a period of escslating tensions, institutes a bounty on shark heads--impoverished fishermen go ape and sharks go extinct. Fun for the whole ecosystem.

Also: As a suba diver, I've gotta say this does NOT make feel safer.... I'm already on the lookout for Flipper, the DARPA dart-playing dolphin.

[Pedro @ Dec 13th 2006 4:31PM]

the question is... are there any non-military uses for zombie sharks?!

[Matt B @ Dec 13th 2006 4:45PM]

Nice SNL reference there.

[mark @ Dec 13th 2006 5:26PM]

@JON digg for the Jaws quote.. oh, waitaminnit...

farewell and adieu to the fair Spanish ladies,
farewell and sdieu to Ladies of Spain

show me the way to go home...
i'm tired and i want to go to bed
i had a little drink about an hour ago
and it's gone right to my head

[Matt Brown @ Dec 13th 2006 5:39PM]

That has got to be some of the funniest tech writing I've ever read, and by the way, "he's just a dolphin mam'"

[Troy Cobb @ Dec 13th 2006 6:14PM]

I, for one, welcome our zombie shark overlords.

[MisterSquared @ Dec 13th 2006 8:02PM]

lol. zombie shark! Resident Evil is coming true...

[daaper @ Dec 14th 2006 10:12AM]

haha...after the "equip them with bionic limbs" part, all I could think of was this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Sharks

...their JAWSOME!

[whiskey @ Dec 14th 2006 1:03PM]

Remember "Robbie" Oblong?