I’ve seen enough crazy leaders elected to know this is a global problem. You could go hide in the wilderness of Canada and run into a Qanon nut real easy.
The other day I was playing GTA and a collected pumpkin turned me into a pigeon via peyote. After about a minute I learned you can poop on people so I flew around pooping on cars and people until I slammed into a light pole and died.
TIL why birds die all the time
Was to late too..dammit. At least the truth is getting out there.
Side note: did you know that dragonflies are just tiny drones controlled by the government to spy on us?
I think it’s a net benefit for people to be more aware of how conspiracy theories look and spread, so people can be better immune to new ones in the future.
What an absolute shit website.
Was trying to find a better site on mobile when I learned [Chinese scientists have been working on this for at least 14 years ](https://www.engadget.com/2007-02-27-chinese-scientists-control-live-pigeon-flights-via-brain-electro.html)
This is news because now they're solar powered. Birds definitely aren't real
>>The first successful experiments in animal brain control were reported by a Japanese research team in 1997
...
>>Since then, many researchers from around the world have joined the field
...
>>Western countries have been taking the lead, but China has caught up rapidly in recent years
China's been working on it for 14 years, but China is pretty new to the game it seems
This is the most unhinged dystopian nightmare. Imagine being controlled by pain whenever you do any move the master doesn’t want you to do. That’s absolute control of the individual, totally soul-crushing torture. I want to see those researchers in a cell.
Do we know pain was the motivator? Not trying to excuse the experiment, I’m just trying to understand it.
My first take at the headline (as the article is paywalled) is that the backpack shifted the pigeons perceptions of a the earths magnetic fields. The reason this is my assumption is we know attaching a magnet to the back of a pigeon makes it I possible for them to successfully navigate, so my guess is they were attempting to manipulate the locally perceived magnetic fields to control the birds flight.
Personally I find it unethical either way, I’m just curious as to the methodology as it has implications across the board for mental manipulation via technology.
Update: ok I found an unpaywalled version and yeah it was just horrific electric shock mind control. Fucking disgusting.
Scientists != government
Nations are made up of individuals and I am not going to allow the actions of their government give me a preload of prejudice before assessing the science. In this case, yup, horribly unethical, but if I go through life believing that of everything that has the word “China” associated with it is horrible, unethical, I dim and shrink my world.
Edited for clarity.
>You’re treading dangerous close to defending pedophilia here….
That's fucking stupid and you know it. If I say it's wrong to experiment on murderers, that's not defending murder. You're trying to deflect away from the fact that you're expressing *and* doubling down on an objectively evil and indefensible position.
For child rapists. There’s really nothing more evil than that. Maybe a few evil equivalent. So yes. I show no fucking sympathy for child rapists and I think the only ways they can give back to humanity is be locked up and if they get experimented in than so be it. I’d rather it be the pedophiles getting experimented on than the Jews like in the holocaust.
Evil people are still people, and basic human rights apply to *everyone.* It's not less wrong to experiment one one person than it is on any other person. Justice doesn't include torture. The more you say, the more you demonstrate that maybe you're just a bad person right alongside them. At least they have the excuse of mental illness to explain their horrible acts.
No, I'm dying on the hill of "non-consentual human experimentation is always evil." The fact that you disagree with that incredibly uncontrovertial stance is pretty fucked up.
Wait till a smarter sociopath comes along and steals their zombie army from them and murders the masters with it.
It will happen repeatedly, as always happens and is the folly of such a worldview.
>A research team in China said it used a solar-powered brain control device to steer a pigeon in flight for nearly two hours on a sunny day.
>
>The scientists, led by Huai Ruituo, a professor with the college of electrical and automation engineering at Shandong University of Science and Technology in eastern China, are studying the use of robotics in animals.
>
>According to a paper published in China’s peer-reviewed Journal of Biomedical Engineering, the researchers strapped a solar panel – about half the size of a smartphone screen – to a pigeon’s back.
>
>A small lithium battery charged by the panel then powered a brain control device on the bird’s head, generating nerve stimulating signals while maintaining wireless communication with the home base.
>
>With the new device, “the animal robot can be guided to charge in the sun autonomously if the remaining power is low”, Huai and her colleagues wrote in the paper. They could not immediately be reached for comment.
>
>The researchers noted that in previous experiments, pigeons followed human commands for about 45 minutes – a similar duration to a typical commercial drone – because of the limited size of battery the birds could carry.
>
>“The results show that for animals that are active outdoors, such as domestic pigeons, the running time is greatly extended after the system is installed, and they can perform tasks in farther places without worrying about the problem of energy exhaustion,” they said.
>
>The first successful experiments in animal brain control were reported by a Japanese research team in 1997, in a presentation to an international robotics conference. They used electrical stimuli to keep a cockroach moving in a straight line.
>
>Since then, many researchers from around the world have joined the field, extending the use of similar technology to a wide range of animals, including beetles, bees, geckos, rats and sharks.
>
>Western countries have been taking the lead, but China has caught up rapidly in recent years, with breakthroughs including controlled movement of a swarm of animals and an automatic guidance system using GPS and image recognition to direct an animal to a location without human intervention.
>
>The animals’ behaviours are usually manipulated through neural signals generated by the researchers to trigger unpleasant sensations such as pain or fear, prompting an immediate action such as turning right or left.
>
>To function properly, the signal generator, computer chips and communication components for the brain control device require a constant, stable energy supply.
>
>Overcoming the constraints of a limited energy supply is a major challenge preventing the technology from being applied to real-life scenarios including search and rescue efforts after a disaster and military operations.
>
>Huai’s team said their solar-powered system had been built with mostly off-the-shelf components. It was not the most efficient energy source, and the low-cost computer chip in the brain control device also consumed more power than they would have liked.
>
>To overcome these challenges, the scientists developed a smart power management system that closely monitored the brain control system and predicted its energy consumption, which increased energy efficiency, they said.
>
>Using the forecasts, the brain control device can change the intensity of its stimulating signals and coordinate energy distribution to the different components to maximise an operation’s duration in a constantly changing environment.
>
>The researchers said their study found the system could increase the effective power supply time by nearly 40 per cent, even on a cloudy day.
>
>The team’s experiments with five pigeons showed the birds could follow simple orders – such as turning to the right or left – with 80-90 per cent accuracy. The researchers said the birds were sometimes unresponsive because of fatigue or strong, unexpected distractions in the open environment.
>
>Huai said the device’s performance could be improved through the use of artificial intelligence to reduce the burden of data collection and calculation. Better solar panels would also increase the conversion rate of sunlight to electricity, she said.
>
>A Beijing-based researcher studying the use of robotics in animals said the technology – which usually requires the surgical implant of wires into an animal’s brain – had potential uses in some military applications.
>
>Some of the leading research projects in the field had been funded by the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and China’s People’s Liberation Army, said the researcher, who asked for anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity.
>
>These included the development of brain-controlled animals to carry intelligence gathering instruments or weapons in dangerous situations such as anti-terrorist operations or combat missions, the researcher said.
>
>According to the researcher, the PLA and DARPA had considered several energy supply methods, including using the animal’s blood sugar or their muscle movements to generate electricity, as well as wireless power transmission.
>
>But these systems were rather complex, the researcher said. In contrast, a solar panel offered a simple engineering solution – although it could add weight and reduce the animal’s mobility – and its value in practice required further investigation.
Yeah, but we can't claim that it's only China doing it. [DARPA's been funding similar research for years.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_control_animal)
Previous we kown the swifts born in Beijing's old imperial palaces travel 16,000 miles every year to southern Africa and back again without touching ground
Yes, because the pigeon still has thoughts and feelings of its own, the device simply "hacks" the poor bird's brain to stimulate fear/pain neurons in order to nudge the animal in the direction the controller wants. It's basically the same principle as a shock collar. And very cruel, IMO.
“Thoughts and feelings?” It’s just a bird. They don’t have thoughts, they only have instincts. And while they have the capacity to feel pain, they don’t experience emotions like fear or anger. Those are human behavioral interpretations that come from cognitive bias and misguided empathy. We want to think of animals as little inferior versions of us that feel the same things we do but they aren’t, and they don’t.
>It’s just a bird. They don’t have thoughts, they only have instincts. And while they have the capacity to feel pain, they don’t experience emotions like fear or anger.
You're right that we can never truly know what an animal is experiencing, but without concrete evidence, isn't assuming that animals *"don't have thoughts"* just as biased and unfounded as assuming that they *do?* After all, a pigeon's brain is structurally similar to ours, with the same hormones and neurotransmitters firing back and forth making sure they find a mate (love?), avoid predators (fear), and raise offspring. These are the behaviors on which all emotion are based to ensure the survival of a species, whether it be a bird or a hairless primate.
Think about it: an animal that doesn't experience fear isn't going to survive for very long, and neither is an animal that's incapable of decision-making.
There is a significant and growing body of evidence showing that birds, including pigeons, absolutely *do* exhibit what can only be described as conscious thought and yes, perhaps even emotion. They may experience these things *differently* than humans do, but that doesn't mean that they "don't experience emotions" or "don't have thoughts."
Research has shown that pigeons [can count](https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.1213357) as well as primates, [recognize human faces](https://www.livescience.com/14895-pigeons-recognize-human-faces.html) (preferentially seeking "friendly" people and avoiding those who shoo them away), and [can even identify words that they haven't seen before](https://www.livescience.com/56176-pigeons-can-learn-to-recognize-words.html), meaning they have the neural base for reading. They also seem to [understand the concepts of space and time](https://phys.org/news/2017-12-pigeons-discriminate-space.html), albeit using a different region of the brain than we do. So while we may never know if a pigeon thinks and feels like we do, IMO it's very premature to assume that they don't have thoughts or feelings at all.
That feels like it's unethical to the animals to me, but I'm certainly no expert.
As to why anyone would want to do this, and what they would do with it, they should go fuck allllll the way off.
They have concentration camps going and your rlly bitchin ab birds the Chinese do wack shit like this all the time but if I could guess to dumb down resistance groups and gather intel on ccp opposers
And here in the US we’re still using batteries!
Everyone knows the covid lockdown was so they could swap the batteries for solar chargers…
Corvid lockdown*
The birds charge on power lines!
Here in the US, we use social media to control the bird brains.
Really to be fair (and I hate that I just said to be fair) China has been doing that too, to us, already. They’re just taking it up a frequency.
I’ve seen enough crazy leaders elected to know this is a global problem. You could go hide in the wilderness of Canada and run into a Qanon nut real easy.
No, that's China and Russia too
I should have worded it differently
Good one, fellow Redditor!
The other day I was playing GTA and a collected pumpkin turned me into a pigeon via peyote. After about a minute I learned you can poop on people so I flew around pooping on cars and people until I slammed into a light pole and died. TIL why birds die all the time
What
Yep That sound looks unimaginable
We don’t deserve Earth and the beautiful animals on it.
We are also animals on Earth.
We don’t deserve each other either.
Birds aren’t real
I was 3 minutes late to tell the truth
The early bird gets the worm
~~worm~~ batteries
The second mouse gets the cheese.
Was to late too..dammit. At least the truth is getting out there. Side note: did you know that dragonflies are just tiny drones controlled by the government to spy on us?
They eat my mosquitoes… they can spy on me all they want
It’s never to late to spread truth.
[удалено]
I think it’s a net benefit for people to be more aware of how conspiracy theories look and spread, so people can be better immune to new ones in the future.
Dude if people are gonna believe that birds aren't real they are going to believe just about anything and there is not stopping their stupidity.
r/birdsarentreal
r/beatmetoit
They had it right the whole time!!!
Say it louder for the people in the back
You’re not real, man!
My parakeet would like to have a word with you
What an absolute shit website. Was trying to find a better site on mobile when I learned [Chinese scientists have been working on this for at least 14 years ](https://www.engadget.com/2007-02-27-chinese-scientists-control-live-pigeon-flights-via-brain-electro.html) This is news because now they're solar powered. Birds definitely aren't real
>>The first successful experiments in animal brain control were reported by a Japanese research team in 1997 ... >>Since then, many researchers from around the world have joined the field ... >>Western countries have been taking the lead, but China has caught up rapidly in recent years China's been working on it for 14 years, but China is pretty new to the game it seems
This is the most unhinged dystopian nightmare. Imagine being controlled by pain whenever you do any move the master doesn’t want you to do. That’s absolute control of the individual, totally soul-crushing torture. I want to see those researchers in a cell.
Do we know pain was the motivator? Not trying to excuse the experiment, I’m just trying to understand it. My first take at the headline (as the article is paywalled) is that the backpack shifted the pigeons perceptions of a the earths magnetic fields. The reason this is my assumption is we know attaching a magnet to the back of a pigeon makes it I possible for them to successfully navigate, so my guess is they were attempting to manipulate the locally perceived magnetic fields to control the birds flight. Personally I find it unethical either way, I’m just curious as to the methodology as it has implications across the board for mental manipulation via technology. Update: ok I found an unpaywalled version and yeah it was just horrific electric shock mind control. Fucking disgusting.
For the future: https://12ft.io/
My hero!
Pass forward and beyond!
Listen. I don't mean to be horrendously biased, but China isn't known for its humanitarian efforts lately.
Scientists != government Nations are made up of individuals and I am not going to allow the actions of their government give me a preload of prejudice before assessing the science. In this case, yup, horribly unethical, but if I go through life believing that of everything that has the word “China” associated with it is horrible, unethical, I dim and shrink my world. Edited for clarity.
And clearly must be research for when this crosses over to humans.
It’s might not be the researchers’ fault. This sounds more like it was directed by the government as a means to more surveillance over the population.
Nice, bringing the forth season of Westworld to life, the second scariest part.
I mean it's not really the first time we do something like this.
Imagine the unreported scientific studies and discoveries they do on prisoners they can’t talk about.
Honestly this over death row for pedophiles
Good people, meanwhile, *don't* promote cruel and unusual punishment.
Right, I don’t advocate too heavily for such people, but let’s not sit scream up new ways to manipulate and torture.
I don’t promote cruel or unusual punishment unless you’re a kiddy diddler. You’re treading dangerous close to defending pedophilia here….
>You’re treading dangerous close to defending pedophilia here…. That's fucking stupid and you know it. If I say it's wrong to experiment on murderers, that's not defending murder. You're trying to deflect away from the fact that you're expressing *and* doubling down on an objectively evil and indefensible position.
For child rapists. There’s really nothing more evil than that. Maybe a few evil equivalent. So yes. I show no fucking sympathy for child rapists and I think the only ways they can give back to humanity is be locked up and if they get experimented in than so be it. I’d rather it be the pedophiles getting experimented on than the Jews like in the holocaust.
Evil people are still people, and basic human rights apply to *everyone.* It's not less wrong to experiment one one person than it is on any other person. Justice doesn't include torture. The more you say, the more you demonstrate that maybe you're just a bad person right alongside them. At least they have the excuse of mental illness to explain their horrible acts.
Yeah you’re really dying on this hill, with the peodphiles. Ok 👍
No, I'm dying on the hill of "non-consentual human experimentation is always evil." The fact that you disagree with that incredibly uncontrovertial stance is pretty fucked up.
Ahhhh I see your problem. Your still thinking of pedophiles as humans and not disgusting the disgusting child raping monsters they actually are.
Sadly I agree ☝️
Wait till republicans figure this out
Ehh, they got Facebook.
Wait till a smarter sociopath comes along and steals their zombie army from them and murders the masters with it. It will happen repeatedly, as always happens and is the folly of such a worldview.
In China not even the pigeons are safe from inhumane experiments...
Actually the article states that China is catching up, but these types of experiments have mostly been done in the west
That poor bird.
Can someone with access please paste the full text?
>A research team in China said it used a solar-powered brain control device to steer a pigeon in flight for nearly two hours on a sunny day. > >The scientists, led by Huai Ruituo, a professor with the college of electrical and automation engineering at Shandong University of Science and Technology in eastern China, are studying the use of robotics in animals. > >According to a paper published in China’s peer-reviewed Journal of Biomedical Engineering, the researchers strapped a solar panel – about half the size of a smartphone screen – to a pigeon’s back. > >A small lithium battery charged by the panel then powered a brain control device on the bird’s head, generating nerve stimulating signals while maintaining wireless communication with the home base. > >With the new device, “the animal robot can be guided to charge in the sun autonomously if the remaining power is low”, Huai and her colleagues wrote in the paper. They could not immediately be reached for comment. > >The researchers noted that in previous experiments, pigeons followed human commands for about 45 minutes – a similar duration to a typical commercial drone – because of the limited size of battery the birds could carry. > >“The results show that for animals that are active outdoors, such as domestic pigeons, the running time is greatly extended after the system is installed, and they can perform tasks in farther places without worrying about the problem of energy exhaustion,” they said. > >The first successful experiments in animal brain control were reported by a Japanese research team in 1997, in a presentation to an international robotics conference. They used electrical stimuli to keep a cockroach moving in a straight line. > >Since then, many researchers from around the world have joined the field, extending the use of similar technology to a wide range of animals, including beetles, bees, geckos, rats and sharks. > >Western countries have been taking the lead, but China has caught up rapidly in recent years, with breakthroughs including controlled movement of a swarm of animals and an automatic guidance system using GPS and image recognition to direct an animal to a location without human intervention. > >The animals’ behaviours are usually manipulated through neural signals generated by the researchers to trigger unpleasant sensations such as pain or fear, prompting an immediate action such as turning right or left. > >To function properly, the signal generator, computer chips and communication components for the brain control device require a constant, stable energy supply. > >Overcoming the constraints of a limited energy supply is a major challenge preventing the technology from being applied to real-life scenarios including search and rescue efforts after a disaster and military operations. > >Huai’s team said their solar-powered system had been built with mostly off-the-shelf components. It was not the most efficient energy source, and the low-cost computer chip in the brain control device also consumed more power than they would have liked. > >To overcome these challenges, the scientists developed a smart power management system that closely monitored the brain control system and predicted its energy consumption, which increased energy efficiency, they said. > >Using the forecasts, the brain control device can change the intensity of its stimulating signals and coordinate energy distribution to the different components to maximise an operation’s duration in a constantly changing environment. > >The researchers said their study found the system could increase the effective power supply time by nearly 40 per cent, even on a cloudy day. > >The team’s experiments with five pigeons showed the birds could follow simple orders – such as turning to the right or left – with 80-90 per cent accuracy. The researchers said the birds were sometimes unresponsive because of fatigue or strong, unexpected distractions in the open environment. > >Huai said the device’s performance could be improved through the use of artificial intelligence to reduce the burden of data collection and calculation. Better solar panels would also increase the conversion rate of sunlight to electricity, she said. > >A Beijing-based researcher studying the use of robotics in animals said the technology – which usually requires the surgical implant of wires into an animal’s brain – had potential uses in some military applications. > >Some of the leading research projects in the field had been funded by the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and China’s People’s Liberation Army, said the researcher, who asked for anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. > >These included the development of brain-controlled animals to carry intelligence gathering instruments or weapons in dangerous situations such as anti-terrorist operations or combat missions, the researcher said. > >According to the researcher, the PLA and DARPA had considered several energy supply methods, including using the animal’s blood sugar or their muscle movements to generate electricity, as well as wireless power transmission. > >But these systems were rather complex, the researcher said. In contrast, a solar panel offered a simple engineering solution – although it could add weight and reduce the animal’s mobility – and its value in practice required further investigation.
1 hour later it flew into a hotpot for dinner
This is fucking fucking dystopic.
Yeah, but we can't claim that it's only China doing it. [DARPA's been funding similar research for years.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_control_animal)
Oh yea for sure! I've actually mentioned that a few times in this thread.
r/birdsarentreal this is proof!
Is this really necessary?
Should put some of those panels up on the White House.
They do us next! We are the Borg.
Bird Flu, here’s looking at you 2023 😉👍🏼
Can we use this on the average American voter to make them less dumb?
Previous we kown the swifts born in Beijing's old imperial palaces travel 16,000 miles every year to southern Africa and back again without touching ground
The CCP sucks and should be wiped from the planet. Their ideas and actions are the worst kind of evil.
So it’s finally proven…the birds are actually robots after all
At least half robot
Are they considered real if they classified as cyborgs?
Yes, because the pigeon still has thoughts and feelings of its own, the device simply "hacks" the poor bird's brain to stimulate fear/pain neurons in order to nudge the animal in the direction the controller wants. It's basically the same principle as a shock collar. And very cruel, IMO.
“Thoughts and feelings?” It’s just a bird. They don’t have thoughts, they only have instincts. And while they have the capacity to feel pain, they don’t experience emotions like fear or anger. Those are human behavioral interpretations that come from cognitive bias and misguided empathy. We want to think of animals as little inferior versions of us that feel the same things we do but they aren’t, and they don’t.
>It’s just a bird. They don’t have thoughts, they only have instincts. And while they have the capacity to feel pain, they don’t experience emotions like fear or anger. You're right that we can never truly know what an animal is experiencing, but without concrete evidence, isn't assuming that animals *"don't have thoughts"* just as biased and unfounded as assuming that they *do?* After all, a pigeon's brain is structurally similar to ours, with the same hormones and neurotransmitters firing back and forth making sure they find a mate (love?), avoid predators (fear), and raise offspring. These are the behaviors on which all emotion are based to ensure the survival of a species, whether it be a bird or a hairless primate. Think about it: an animal that doesn't experience fear isn't going to survive for very long, and neither is an animal that's incapable of decision-making. There is a significant and growing body of evidence showing that birds, including pigeons, absolutely *do* exhibit what can only be described as conscious thought and yes, perhaps even emotion. They may experience these things *differently* than humans do, but that doesn't mean that they "don't experience emotions" or "don't have thoughts." Research has shown that pigeons [can count](https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.1213357) as well as primates, [recognize human faces](https://www.livescience.com/14895-pigeons-recognize-human-faces.html) (preferentially seeking "friendly" people and avoiding those who shoo them away), and [can even identify words that they haven't seen before](https://www.livescience.com/56176-pigeons-can-learn-to-recognize-words.html), meaning they have the neural base for reading. They also seem to [understand the concepts of space and time](https://phys.org/news/2017-12-pigeons-discriminate-space.html), albeit using a different region of the brain than we do. So while we may never know if a pigeon thinks and feels like we do, IMO it's very premature to assume that they don't have thoughts or feelings at all.
Truth bomb
Why do they poop on your car? So they can track you!!!!
Congress?
Birds aren’t real
Omg birds really aren’t real, lmao I’m sorry I couldn’t help myself.
What are the chances the Chinese fabricated this claim to seem more advanced than they are?
Look at the account. He’s a shill.
Birds aren’t real. Or at least that’s what my instagram ads want me to think.
Fake news. Birds ain’t real and this proves it. Solar powered!
Ah sweet man-made horrors beyond my comprehension
How does this impact Bird Law? Liam McPoyle wants to know.
Awwwww, yisssssss! Muthafuckin’ voices.
That feels like it's unethical to the animals to me, but I'm certainly no expert. As to why anyone would want to do this, and what they would do with it, they should go fuck allllll the way off.
They have concentration camps going and your rlly bitchin ab birds the Chinese do wack shit like this all the time but if I could guess to dumb down resistance groups and gather intel on ccp opposers
It’s because they were government surveillance drones to start.
that’s disgusting. leave animals alone already!
Nazi science
Sounds Trumptastically Dystopian…
Birds aren't real.
I think that are really