Killing an animal quickly and efficiently is generally held to be more "humane" than torturing it endlessly (and keeping it alive). It's the reason people put sickly pets down, rather than letting them suffer for months.
The company PR is quite obviously, as claimed, "disingenuous":
> 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.
Morality is less about the victim and more about the actions of the oppressor. You can say 'screw cockroaches' all you want but how does that justify the savage action of torture?
> Boring a hole in the head, and then another hole in the chest
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.
It is on the head, but it isn't a hole. I imagined it to be more like filing the smooth surface of one of your nails at there are no nerve endings located in the exoskeleton (which is why insects shed their chitin exoskeletons until maturity).
Chitin is the arthropods version of keratin (the stuff your hair and nails are made of).
If someone filed down my nails to the point where they were gone, I'd be more than a little distressed. The skin under the nails is incredibly sensitive (I believe it becomes less so over time when exposed to the air, but we are talking about filing off a protective coating here). If they wouldn't grow back (no idea whether that applies to the cockroaches or not), I'd feel much worse.
I said filing the smooth surface of the nails, not filing all the way through the nail. It is the same as what woman do when they stick fake nails over their real nails... they simply rough up the surface for adhesive purposes, not file the entire nail away.
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.
I don't agree with your premise here. I'm sure cockroaches have no concept of existential suffering, of the 'how unfortunate I am' variety. That doesn't mean they don't experience pain while it's being administered, and this backpack thing doesn't exactly look comfortable.
According to the website [1], it is fairly debatable that they "feel pain" and if they do, they are anaesthetised.
> 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.
and starting with insects makes it easier for transition to torturing of sentient beings. It isn't about what a cockroach feels (lets hope not much), it is about what doing it to cockroach does to the mentality of the one who does it.
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.
I am torn about medical experiments on animals but I think the distinction needs to be made between what happens in a lab (with ethical frameworks) and what happens in civilian life for entertainment.
that distinction exists only for us, ie. ones who do it. It doesn't exist for subjects of our actions. Refusal to understand it that is so widespread trough the society is a major roadblock in development of emphatic ability which is the key to triggering the next qualitative stage of the human species brain development.
I don't want to start a comment war, but your reasoning is a big part of why I'm against abortion. I would truely be interested to know how the views on the cockroach/torture folks overlap (or not) with their thoughts on abortion.
we start as a lump of quickly dividing cell, a tumor of a kind. We progress though fish-stage, reptile, etc... Different people have different decency standards wrt. killing and torture of living organisms. As we know the society-wide the standard is pretty low - everything, except humans in majority of situation, can be killed and everything, except (thanks God for animal rights people) majority of mammals in majority of situations, tortured. My personal standard as of now is that killing of insects/fish ok, reptiles and birds - don't like it, yet still somewhat ok, and no killing for mammals, and no torture for anybody (at least what i can perceive as a torture). Thus i personally think the abortion is ok up to about week 6-7.
Admittedly death by pyrethroids (most insecticides) is basically death by paralysis, and can't be too pleasant either. I usually resort to the bottom of a shoe as it's the fastest way.
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. :)
I live in Laos and can confirm the official doctrine is to not hurt any animals. Many people however use the heaviest antibug spray available. Very very few vegetarians around as well.
You might want to be careful attributing beliefs that are part of Buddhist doctrine to people who avow that they are Buddhists. The overlap (for any religion, not just Buddhism) isn't all that large.
This is an animal we purposefully kill by the thousands upon thousands just because they're annoying.