At Duke University a researcher who’s pioneering brain-computer interfaces has circuited four rats’ together via their brains and created a gooey and organic “Brainet”.

Miguel Nicolelis, the neurobiologist pioneering this neuroengineering at Duke University has spent 30 years doing similar experiments in hopes of uncovering the secrets of the human mind.

Earlier, in 2011, Nicolelis connected the brain of individual monkeys in order to get them to work a virtual monkey arm and grab virtual objects with it using only their mind. It didn’t take long for the each monkey to grasp the process mentally and move their extra invisible monkey hand.

Nicolelis then wondered if it were possible to string together several brains and have the work together to perform particular tasks. He used four rats to test the idea.

In order to get a drink of water the rats would have to learn to work together mentally to get a drink. In a short amount of time the rats were drinking regularly as normal.

Currently the rats have Frankenstein-like electrodes embedded in their heads. That will change as the technology progresses until it’s completely non-invasive.

What can we gain from a “brainet” as humans? Will we eventually become Borg-like? Is it smart to move toward a hive-mind? Who knows.

Downside? Enough people are connected via their brains and someone hacks the “brainet” to make the world bow before them. Upside? Natural disaster takes place and we use the “brainet” to locate those in need of help and almost telepathically send the information needed to medically aid those people even though the person at the receiving end might not be trained in life-saving techniques.

The entire idea is still in its infancy as to the possible applications but as Nicolelis points out:

“These computers will not do word processing or numerical calculation or internet searches, they will be tailored for very specific tasks like what animals are tailored for. It’s a totally different kind of vision for computation that we’re not used to.”

The whole process is intriguingly involved and fascinating….and somewhat terrifying.

Imagine waking up and being hooked to someone else’s brain?

Or imagine that this is slowly becoming a reality….

[Motherboard]

With Dawn of the Planet of the Apes just around the corner, this couldn’t be a more timely reminder of how things can change.

Remember how dramatic of a moment it was when Caesar from Rise of the Planet of the Apes stands up and yells “NO!” to the treatment of his kind and then mankind gets whipped into submission by their primal cousins?

That moment has already happened in a much more relaxed and quiet way.

Kanzi, a famous Bonobo who’s met Oprah and communicates very comfortably with humans via sign language, has quietly signaled the clock is ticking not by tossing us out by windows or spearing us with broken broom handles. Nope.

He’s roasting marshmallows…

And flipping burgers.

No. Really. He flips burgers too.

[Gawker]

While we all wait for the scenes in Planet of the Apes to play out in real-life, a female chimp named Gina will give us all a glimmer of hope that at least a small percentage of our future primate overlords will need us for a little sumthin’ sumthin’…

Even if that something’s acting out her favorite love scenes from high-quality fare like ‘Slappin’ Bumpies 2′.

For those still catching up…

Gina is a female chimp at the Seville Zoo in Spain. As part of the zoo’s enrichment program, Gina was given her very own remote control for a television mounted to a wall near her cage.

Not long after Gina began figuring out how to work the remote, she also found that she preferred certain channels over others.

Those ‘certain channels’ were the ones that featured the people that kept her in cages riding one another like pack animals (obviously we’re skirting the ‘P’ word because that tosses red flags).

Pablo Herreros, the zoo’s primatologist wrote in his paper on Gina and her viewing preferences:

“The surprise was when they found that within a few days, Gina was not only using the remote control perfectly well, but that she also used to choose the p**n channel for entertainment, as many of us would have done.”

At least we know there’ll be a few sympathizers we can count on when we end up in cages with bad day-time television blaring at us.

Even if they just want us for our bodies.

We went there.

[New York Daily News]

This is actually a really horrible story. A vervet monkey was killed and burned in South Africa by a mob who was convinced it was a witch. Bonus awful points – the police helped out by shooting at the monkey.

It reported that the monkey wandered into the settlement last week Monday, May 23, and was pelted with stones, shot at by police, and then burnt to death.

Moswetsi was woken up by friends on Monday morning and told about the monkey. They said it was going around Kagiso “talking to people”.

Hopefully this is not foreshadowing for the monkeys if they ever actually do develop the ability to speak.

[Times Live]

Officials in Mishima City, Japan have reported that a terrorist monkey, known as “Lucky”, has escaped during a cage cleaning and has left the government-run nature park where it was being held. Lucky is most widely known for biting nearly 120 people during a two month terror spree of the resort towns in central Japan last year.

“The city published an emergency notice urging residents to lock their doors, though no new attacks have been reported.”

[AP image: (AP Photo/Kyodo News)]

Awkward.

MEXICO CITY — A man with a mysterious bulge under his T-shirt was stopped, searched and detained at Mexico City’s international airport after authorities found 18 tiny endangered monkeys in a girdle he was wearing.

The Public Safety Department said in a statement Monday that 38-year-old Roberto Cabrera arrived on a commercial flight Friday from Lima, Peru, when authorities noticed the bulge and conducted a body search.

The department says Cabrera was carrying the 6-inch titi monkeys in pouches attached to the girdle.

I was going to say this could make a delightful children’s song, then the article goes on to say two of the poor little creatures had died along the way. Which now makes it a mediocre Tim Burton movie.

[LA Times]

[CNN]

If this isn’t the coolest picture ever taken, I don’t know what is.

Santisuk Phromdao is a pig-tailed macaque monkey from Sai Buri district, Patttani province, southern Thailand. Although only five years old, Santisuk patrols the streets of Thailand everyday dressed in a blazer with the words ‘Monkey Police’ laced across it.

According to Thailand’s Nation newspaper, Santisuk was adopted by Pol Col Yutthapol Phromdao Yutthapol, who, after discovering the injured monkey at a local clinic, recruited him into his squad, thereby turning the simple-minded primate into the first-ever monkey cop.

Satisuk’s tour of duty began at a local checkpoint, where Yutthapol taught him how to collect coconuts and other fruits from locals by enticing him with bottles of delectable Vitamilk. Soon afterward, Satisuk’s duties grew from mundane tasks into full-fledged public relations.

Halt citizen!

[Weird Asia News via Derren Brown Blog]