Quick, name the most useful tool ever. Fire? The wheel? Google?
It's open to debate, but animals would have to rank right up there.
Animals have been used since the beginning of civilization -- after all, who do you think were pulling those first stone wheels? -- and these days they're being used in ways early humans couldn't possibly envision.
Bees for detecting bombs. Remote-controlled rats for surveying disaster scenes. Goats for "manufacturing" spider silk protein in their milk.
Animals are used for one simple reason: They're good at what they do. With millions of years of evolution on their side, animals have capabilities that can't easily be matched -- or in some cases even understood -- by man or his mechanisms. That isn't stopping researchers, however, from using current technologies to put animal skills to good use.
For example, honeybees are hard to beat when it comes to detecting minute airborne substances, so why not equip them with wireless devices, train them to sniff out explosives and use them to detect land mines, bomb factories and suicide bombers? DARPA-backed researchers are working on just such a project.
"Nonhuman organisms, from bacteria to birds, have many abilities far beyond humans that we are only partially aware of and understand," says Jon Harrison, associate professor in the Department of Biology at Arizona State University. "Engineering, both genetic and micro-electronic, is beginning to develop to the point that some of these skills can be harnessed for use by humans."
Researchers have failed for decades to synthetically manufacture spider silk, the world's toughest fiber. This despite huge economic incentives: The industrial and military uses for the material are seemingly endless. A small Canadian biotech firm called Nexia, however, recently manufactured such silk using not synthetic means, but animal talents.
Enter the transgenic West African dwarf goat. Nexia discovered that the spider silk gene could be stably transferred from spiders to these tiny, fast-breeding goats, which, like all mammals, produce milk containing various proteins. Thanks to advances in transgenics and spider genome research, the otherwise normal milk of these goats now contains spider silk protein, ready for extraction and spinning into fishing lines, microsutures and, later, it is hoped, soft body armor.
"It's probably the front end of a new trend: using animals in gene expression," says Brent Erickson, an official at the Biotechnology Industry Organization. "It's probably the first example that may be commercially viable."
The rat is another talented specimen, with a skill that's easy to understand, but difficult to imitate: navigating chaotic environments (such as the rubble of a collapsed building). Why not strap miniature cameras on rats to see what's happening in a disaster scene? Professor John Chapin and his team at State University of New York in Brooklyn are taking the idea a step further: by implanting electrodes in rats' brains, they've created remote-control rodents that can be instructed to turn left or right. The electrodes, receiving a wireless signal from a laptop, cue the rats to go in the desired direction, rewarding them by stimulating a pleasure center in the brain.
Robots simply can't match the agility of rats, although some efforts are getting admirably close, like the cockroach-inspired RHex project.
"It's clear that robots have a long way to go before they are competitive with animal performance," says Kellar Autumn, who studies biomechanics as assistant professor in the Department of Biology at Lewis & Clark College. "For example, there aren't many, if any, robots that are hard to catch. When a gecko escapes in my lab, it's a real pain to catch it."
In other words, until robots can scurry through rubble like rodents, using the rodents themselves might make sense.
Some view these experiments with skepticism, however. Viewed as pieces of hardware, animals have stunning tech specs that researchers -- whether in robotics or genome labs -- are only now beginning to fully understand and appreciate.
"Those of us building dynamic robots are in awe of the strength, speed, energetic efficiency, agility and grace of animals," says Marc Raibert, founder of Boston Dynamics and, earlier in his career, the MIT Leg Lab.
What concerns them is the fact that animals are no more pure hardware than human beings.
"We're inspired by new, mutually beneficial ways humans have discovered to partner with animals," says Jodi Lytle Buckman, the American Humane Association's director of shelter services, "but we must be vigilant to ensure that technological advances which utilize animals are not made at the expense of animals."
What disturbs others is the slippery slope scenario. If spider silk genes are being transferred to goats, what genes might be transferred to humans, and with what results? If a goat can be turned into a protein manufacturing facility, why not a person? If the brains of rats can be controlled, are the brains of humans next?
"While people like the useful applications of these technologies, they are disturbed about their overall implications," says Chapin, speaking of his own experiments on rats.
Humans have used the unique skills of animals for millennia -- bloodhounds for hunting, pigeons for messaging. But recent advances in technology have taken man well beyond the simple usage of animals' natural strengths.
"The animals that live with us every day have remarkable capabilities," says Nexia CEO Jeffrey Turner. "If we can leave our egos at the door and show some humility before nature and really understand some of these things, we'd be foolish not to work with these animals to make our lives better and safer."
