#12: The Remote-Controlled Bull (Comments)

"Very well-researched and delivered in an engaging, breezy, wink-wink tone similar to that of Mark Leyner and Billy Goldberg's Why Do Men Have Nipples?, this will likely be enjoyed equally by science buffs and casual aficionados of the curious. One of the finest science/history bathroom books of all time."
-Kirkus Reviews

#12: The Remote-Controlled Bull

Yale researcher Jose Delgado stood in the hot sun of a bullring in Cordova, Spain. With him in the ring was a large, angry bull. The animal noticed him and began to charge. It gathered speed. Delgado appeared defenseless, but when the bull was mere feet away, Delgado pressed a button on a remote control unit in his hand, sending a signal to a chip implanted in the bull's brain. Abruptly, the animal stopped in its tracks. It huffed and puffed a few times, and then walked docilely away.

Delgado's experience in the ring was an experimental demonstration of the ability of his "stimoceiver" to manipulate behavior. The stimoceiver was a computer chip, operated by a remote-control unit, that could be used to electrically stimulate different regions of an animal's brain. Such stimulation could produce a wide variety of effects, including the involuntary movement of limbs, the eliciting of emotions such as love or rage, or the inhibition of appetite. It could also be used, as Delgado showed, to stop a charging bull.

Delgado's experiment sounds so much like science fiction, that many people are surprised to learn it occurred back in 1963. During the 1970s and 80s, research into electrical stimulation of the brain (ESB) languished, stigmatized by the perception that it represented an effort to control people's minds and thoughts. But more recently, ESB research has once again been flourishing, with reports of researchers creating remote-controlled rats, pigeons, and even sharks.

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Total Comments: 11

Comments
Listed in chronological order. Newest comments at the end.

They use this today on children .It's not in their brain but on their body.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/school_of_shock_index.html
School of Shock
By Jennifer Gonnerman
Electric shocks. Withholding food. Social isolation. Why are we paying for autistic, mentally retarded, and emotionally troubled kids to be treated like enemy combatants?
Posted by Mark on Thu Aug 30, 2007 at 10:29 AM

This one is bollocks. In 1963 the 'chip' would have been the size of a volkswagon, let alone the remote control required to activate it.
Posted by Dylan on Sun Sep 02, 2007 at 11:12 PM

I want a remote control shark with a laser attached to its head!
Posted by joe on Tue Sep 18, 2007 at 09:55 AM

Its not necessarily BS. Its possible the "chip" was just an electrode maybe with a small battery?
I think they had small batteries by '63.
Posted by Randy on Sat Sep 22, 2007 at 09:24 PM

out here in NZ some one made a remote control sheep dog a few years back, it was on the program "country calander" a few years ago
Posted by Daz on Wed Oct 31, 2007 at 06:35 PM

If you can supress apetites with electric stimualtion, it seems there should be a big industry based on this, given all the other expensive and extreme lengths people go to so they can lose weight.
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Posted by 21233sda on Thu Jun 12, 2008 at 09:33 AM

This is what the CIA does to people. They put the chips in people's brains whenever they go to the hospital for ANY kind of surgery. Then the CIA can use their remote controls to beam thoughts into your head. Stanadard remote control deflecting apparatuses (tinfoil hats) DO NOT protect against this kind of mind control. Do please DO NOT GO TO THE HOSPITAL EVER FOR ANY REASON OR YOU WILL BECOME A CIA MIND-PUPPET!!!!
Posted by Like I'm telling you on Thu Aug 28, 2008 at 10:33 AM

just say no to rfid chips
Posted by no on Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 10:44 PM

This is real, there was no "chip" it was just an electrode that would shock the part of the brain it was implanted in. These electrodes were actually quite big, but plenty small enough to fit onto a bulls skull. Delgado used them on people too, he was trying to cure schizophrenia.
Posted by anon on Wed Jan 21, 2009 at 03:02 AM

They don't need electrode now, they use magnetic stimulation. used in psy hospital:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation
Posted by lol on Mon Mar 14, 2011 at 02:17 PM