Pioneer Animals
What would you do?....
You've co founded a globally-recognised company whose objective is to remind the world how crucial renewable energy is for our continued survival and in the process created the best-selling electric car of all time. Despite its popularity, said company's most profitable year saw a loss of $862 million and the majority of the world still likes burning oil so you've turned your gaze upwards.... if we can't save the Earth, we need to get off it sharpish. You've founded Space X on the principle that to survive long-term as a species, we must become a space-faring race. Our first port of call? – Mars. Your team have designed incredible, unmanned rockets capable of delivering a large interplanetary payload into low Earth orbit, before returning to touch down safely on Terra Firma. To promote the endeavour and the rocket's capabilities, you've blasted one of those very electric cars into space (not gonna do much good for us up there is it??) The world has watched spellbound and inspired, then returned to burning tyres and luzzing plastic at sea creatures. Even the most optimistic observer notes a colony on Mars is still a looooong way off – try 140 million miles.... Your own lofty ambitions don't have us setting up shop for at least a couple more decades by which time you'll have run out of TV shows and films to cameo in. You've done Simpsons, South Park, The Big Bang Theory, Iron Man 2...so what next?
It's obvious isn't it? - Brain implant in a pig.
Yep, last month Elon Musk once again made headlines when he showcased on a live stream several swine carrying the products of another of his start-ups, Neuralink. The pigs in question, led by the charismatic Gertrude (real star quality) had the coin-sized devices fully embedded in their skulls, with more than 1000 threadlike, flexible electrodes reaching into their cerebral cortices where numerous functions such as motor control and sensory feedback are governed. By amplifying and relaying signals from the cortex to a nearby computer via a super sciencey computer chip and a dose of bluetooth, Musk hopes the interface he glibly referred to as a porcine “Fitbit” can one day solve a host of spinal and neurological conditions, returning movement to victims of paralysis or restoring sight to the blind.... The ultimate goal of creating a super-strong army of uber-obedient, crime-fighting hogs is of course implicit. But bluetooth animals though??! Just think; the next time you're searching for available devices near your iPhone, you might be able to convince a duck to steal you a croissant or have a horse kick a traffic warden in the arse.
Of course, not everyone is down with us tampering with animals to advance our own species and many of us probably spat our bacon sarnies out when reading that Musk was trying to inception some livestock, but the reality is we owe animal testing for much more than 24 hour lipstick and CK One (CLASSIC fragrance!) Many major advances in medicine would not have been achieved without it. Going back a full century, dogs helped us realise the efficacy of treating diabetes with insulin in 1920. Two decades later, the effectiveness of penicillin as an antibiotic was proven in manky mice and in the 50s, hip prostheses were developed using wobbly sheep. Sad rats in the 60s helped us better understand antidepressants and wheezy guinea pigs lent their misfortune to the development of the asthma inhaler in the 70s. Gertrude's grandparents helped us create the MRI in the 80s and we can thank monkeys for the development of HIV-suppressing drugs in the 90s and rabbits from the noughties for the cervical cancer vaccine.
Of course Noah, a human, ultimately deserves the credit cos he bundled this lot in a boat that time it chucked it down but undeniably, it's by standing on the shoulders of our critter comrades (do animals have shoulders?? Potential future article there...) that we've been able to peer as far as we have into the future of scientific possibility.
Research currently being conducted on rats and mice is seeing advances in the battle against Alzheimers, cancer, Parkinson's and even the process of ageing itself. Brilliant teams around the globe are using cutting edge technologies to keep us living longer and healthier lives. But more people living longer means more strain on the already buckling planet and so, bonkers as it seems, we're back to looking for possible solutions off-world.
So is Musk to become this epoch's Noah, building his ark not of wood, but shiny space rocket components? Can he deliver a chosen few to salvation before the final flood comes? He's certainly got the PR clout and social media presence Noah lacked (It's unfair to expect Noah to have had a presence on Twitter since the Old Testament was literally AGES ago, but not even Myspace...?!!?) but if our continued existence is as dependent on animals as our scientific past suggests, is Musk the man to convince them to go two by two? He might have the pigs onside but cynics would argue they're just following electronically delivered orders. Besides, the phrase doesn't go “Happy as a pig in... space” so they'll probably prefer to stay put, come what may. You lose the popular pig vote, and you can kiss goodbye to horses, geese, goats and sheeps since they all seem to knock about together, at least according to the stories I read my son at bedtime.
Whatever happens, turn the light off when you leave a room, separate your recycling and remember the scientific debt you owe to our bestial friends the next time you're swatting a fly, setting a mousetrap or firing a grenade launcher at a cow in Cambodia.
Right, “Top 5 animals with/without shoulders”....
Ian Greenland