That title might sound a little wacky, but it is fairly close to the truth: researchers have been making strides recently in controlling insects directly through microchips.

The premise has much in common with a popular psychiatric 'treatments' out of the first half of the 20th century: electroshock therapy. Using zaps of electricity, administered directly to an insect's brain, scientists hope to bend the steel will of insects, and get them to do our bidding on command -- through a brain-controlling microchip, or remote control. 

One stumbling block it this great idea is powering the microchips that control the bugs. "Wires from an external power source restrict their motion, and most battery cells are too heavy and wouldn't fit on the insect," said Keisuke Morishima, an insect-enslaver from Tokyo University.

But just the other day, some brain-heavy boffins have come up with an eloquent answer to the power problem. The idea is to use the energy generated by the cyborg insects' own muscles to power the microchips, by embedding a piezoelectric fibre along the body of the bug.

Scientists fitted up an unlucky Madagascarian coackroach with this piezoelectric fibre, to test their theory. The bug moved around, and as the scientists' suspected, each step generated a reasonable amount of power. They now figure that about a 100 fibers would generate enough power to sustain a cyborg slave insect's microchips.

Kevin Warwick, a cybernetics expert who is researching cyborg microchip enslavement at the University of Reading, has his doubts though: he thinks that a 100 piezoelectric fibers might be too much of a burden for a coackroach. "I'm quite skeptical of the leap to using this as a power supply," he said. He then went on to say that this kind of power system would be much better for enslaving cyborg rats instead, because they're larger, stronger, and more useful creatures anyways.

Certainly, Kevin Warwick must expect all sorts of exciting breakthroughs coming up just right around the corner, in this 'stimulating' new field of cyborg insect slavery.