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" The folks who brought us the giant, smartphone-controlled cyborg cockroach are back\u2014this time, with a wired-up scorpion. Be afraid. Backyard Brains, a small Michigan-based company dedicated to spreading the word about neuroscience, has been running surgical experiments on these deadly arachnids for the past two months, using electrical current to induce them to strike. Dylan Miller, a summer intern working the project, insists it&amp;#039;s the first time that an electrical current has ever been used to remotely induce a scorpion to strike with its pedipalps (claws) and tail.  &amp;quot;I was originally looking at how scorpions sense the ground vibrations of their prey,&amp;quot; says Miller, a neuroscience major at Michigan State University, &amp;quot;and I just kind of stumbled on this defensive response.&amp;quot;  In retrospect, it&amp;#039;s easy to see how Miller got there. Scorpions use vibrations and their tactile sense to navigate the world, identifying both prey and predator. A touch on the leg, for instance, tells a scorpion that it&amp;#039;s under attack, provoking a defensive fight-or-flight reaction\u2014either fleeing from danger or going full-out Bruce Lee. In nature, the scorpion would have to be physically touched for that to happen. But in the lab, an electrode to the leg nerves and a tiny, remote-controlled function generator feeding a signal will do the trick. The scorpion experiments build on the earlier work Backyard Brains has done with cockroaches, namely RoboRoach. A Kickstarter project back in June 2013 and now a real for-sale home kit, RoboRoach enables purchasers to surgically implant a live roach with three sets of electrodes and then control its movement with a smartphone app via a Bluetooth control unit worn on the roach&amp;#039;s back. The controversial kit has been criticized as cruel by people like cognitive ethologist Marc Bekoff, but the company argues that RoboRoach&amp;#039;s educational &amp;quot;benefits outweigh the cost.&amp;quot; Undaunted by the criticism, Backyard Brains co-founder Gregory Gage was already tossing around the idea of robo-scorpions last October.       Why scorpions? &amp;quot;Very little is known about them,&amp;quot; Miller says. &amp;quot;Compared to other animals, not a lot of research has been done, and the research that has been done has been primarily focused on their venom.&amp;quot; Of course, that&amp;#039;s not the only reason. &amp;quot;Well, they&amp;#039;re cool\u2026 They got these big claws, these tails. They&amp;#039;re built like tanks, stocky and heavily armored. And their behavior is just really fascinating too.&amp;quot; So far, Miller has performed surgeries on giant desert hairy scorpions, Asian forest scorpions, and red claw scorpions. Obviously, these creatures are more difficult to handle than giant cockroaches. To prepare these stinging critters for surgery, Miller first dunks them in ice water for 10-15 minutes, which puts them in a coma-like state. Then he takes modeling clay and affixes them to a piece of cardboard or plastic for a closer look under a microscope. The clay can&amp;#039;t be too sticky, though. &amp;quot;I used Silly Putty once, and I gave the scorpion, well, a leg waxing,&amp;quot; he says. The team does the surgery with a thin, sharp lance, like the kind used by diabetics to check their blood sugar levels. Miller pokes a hole near a leg nerve ending and then inserts platinum iridium wire into the hole. Once the scorpion has recovered, Miller will typically run 2-3 volts for 100 milliseconds of alternating current into its leg using either the RoboRoach backpack or a desk-mounted function generator. Experiments are always conducted in an enclosed environment, such as a terrarium. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t want a potentially angry scorpion running around in the lab space,&amp;quot; he explains.  Now, if you&amp;#039;ve already imagined ambushing your enemies with a remote-controlled scorpion\u2014and at this point in the article, who hasn&amp;#039;t?\u2014then I&amp;#039;m afraid you are in for a disappointment. First, the cybernetic scorpions have tendency to pull out their electrodes, breaking the control link. In addition, the controller, even when it does work, can cause only one type of defensive reaction, either flight or fight, depending on the species used. So no sneak attacks. Still, Miller plans to test other scorpions. &amp;quot;I wonder if there is a species out there whose \u2026 first response is to move, and its second response is to attack,&amp;quot; he says. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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