Fooling cockroaches, calming chickens

A team of scientists at a university in Brussels have created an artificial cockroach, in order to study “collective intelligence”. John Schwartz reports in the New York Times that “[t]he researchers have found a chemical blend that smells roachish enough for the impostors to trick real roaches into believing they are part of the group, and even to modify group behavior by getting the roaches to follow them from dark to light places.

“The researchers say they are also making progress with chickens, which exhibit a destructive ‘panic behavior’ that might be calmed with poultrybots.”