Animal Cyborgs

Definition

An animal whose physical or mental form has been implanted with a piece of technology for the purposes of research, control, experimentation, or rehabilitation.

Implications

Animal Cyborgs are a promising area of study for several reasons. First off, one of the biggest hurdles in the development of human cyborgs is the restrictions on human testing. For example, it is ethically permissible to completely control the movements of a fly or beetle, which allows us to understand how nervous systems can be synthesized with circuitry to advance fields such as bionics. Animals have also evolved some capabilities that defy our most advanced technologies. The flight systems of a fly or hummingbird far outmatches even our most deft aircrafts. By building off of these advanced organisms we avoid having to start from scratch and can instead focus on novel combinations of animals' natural abilities and our technological augmentations. Animal cyborgs can also offer glimpses into non-human intelligences. Intelligence is a notoriously anthropocentric concept, and is often used as the elastic category by which we differentiate ourselves from mere "animals".

Animal cyborgs allow us to understand and appreciate animals in new ways. For example, by embedding salmon with tracking devices we have started to appreciate the strange intelligence of this species that allows it to travel thousands of miles and return to the exact stream it spawned in. What would we learn about non-human intelligences from giving a bonobo a voicebox? Just as advances in exploration and navigation opened up our horizons of cultures, advances in informatic technologies could be the key for understanding new horizons of intelligence and culture in the many species that surround us.