Want To Study A Dragonfly? Put A Teeny Backpack On It
Dragonfly Backpack Anthony Leonardo, Janelia Farm Research Campus / HHMI via Wired Strapped in for learning How do you figure out the way a dragonfly's mind works? That's the challenge for Anthony Leonardo, a neuroscientist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farms Research Campus who studies the role neural circuits play in behavior. He's currently exploring the neuroscience of how dragonflies and salamanders capture their prey. To study the hunting behavior of dragonflies, Leonardo and his team needed to record how their neurons and muscles responded mid-flight. So they developed a teeny backpack for their flighty subjects, one that would amplify the signals from electrodes recording the dragonflies' brain signals. As Leonardo told Co.Create, "to load an insect up with gear is like dancing in a ballet wearing a backpack filled with rocks. You can put double the dragonfly's body weight on these creatures and they can fly, but they...