Researchers at Case Western Reserve University managed to generate electricity from naturally occurring chemicals within the abdomen of the false death’s head cockroach. How does this help us, you might ask? The thought is that if we can learn to harvest energy from within the human body, we may spur the development of a new generation of implantable devices that can work as long as the patient is alive, and therefore producing electricity, without requiring bulky batteries, a typical stumbling block for biomedical engineers.
I’m all for advances in technology, but I can’t seem to wrap my mind around this one. Part of the problem is probably that I am a cockroachaphobe. I don’t mind most bugs (except spiders), but I am having troubles getting over the fact that I find cockroaches creepy, ugly, and disgusting. Why couldn’t a cute bug, like a lady bug, have chemicals capable of producing electricity in its belly?