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This isn't news to readers of Slashdot, but I thought it was interesting enough to be worth mentioning: scientists have implanted electrodes in rats' brains that they can stimulate by remote control, and have thereby trained the rats to be basically steerable. The CNN article notes that aside from the remote control, this isn't all that different from long-known experiments about stimulating rats' pleasure centers, but it still seems to me to be a big enough step to be interesting. The article also discusses some of the ethical implications, and points out that although most people probably don't care much about doing this to rats, as soon as it starts being done to dogs or, say, humans, there will be furor about it.