To explore how groups of cockroaches make collective decisions, scientists have created a robotic cockroach that the real insects accept as one of their own.
The robot doesn’t look anything like a cockroach to human eyes.
“It looks like an electronic matchbox,” said Jose Halloy, a researcher at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. But that doesn’t matter, he says, “because in fact it has to look like a cockroach from a cockroach perspective.”
Basically, it has to smell like a cockroach. The scientists coat the boxy robots with a chemical, a cockroach smell, so the real roaches won’t run away.
See also: Ancient Scorpion Was Bigger Than Car.
(Both via Irreality News Wire).