Neuroscientist and founder of Backyard Brains, Greg Gage sparked a good deal of controversy with the premier of his "Cockroach Beatbox" TED Talk. Backyard Brains sells the SpikerBox, a device that allows you to 'listen to neurons' by placing electrodes into invertebrate animals such as cockroaches, crickets, and crawdads (they recommend removing a leg and using that). The output is neural activity, or 'spikes', that can be heard via a built-on speaker, or seen on your computer, iPhone, Android, iPad, or iPod Touch.

Gage brings his sense of humor to his latest project, Insane in the Chromatophores, in which he triggers a  Longfin Inshore Squid's color-changing membrane using music...specifically Cypress Hill's "Insane in the Brain". Technically speaking, "Squids (like many other cephalopods) can quickly control pigmented cells called chromatophores to reflect light. The Longfin Inshore has 3 different chromatophore colors: brown, red, and yellow. An iPod works by converting digital music to a small current that it sends to tiny magnets in the earbuds. The magnets are connected to cones that vibrate and produce sound. Since this is the same electrical current that neurons use to communicate, we cut off the ear buds and instead placed the wire into the [squid's] fin nerve. When the iPod sends bass frequencies (<100Hz) the axons in the nerves have enough charge to fire an action potential. This will in turn cause the muscles in the chromatophores to contract."

The end result is visually compelling, if not humorous, but it raises some ethical questions. Are Gage's SpikerBoxes, which he markets as a tool to inspire young minds, promoting a disregard for animal life? We're interested to see what Gage and Backyard Brains are working on next.