SoylentNews

Animals Spy a New Enemy: Drones

posted by cmn32480 on Saturday October 24 2015, @01:17AM   
from the get-off-my-lawn dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

On a sunny morning in October 2014, Christopher Schmidt strolled onto the grassy fields of Magazine Beach, a public park along the Charles River in Cambridge, Mass. To get a better view of the fall scenery, he launched his drone, a DJI Phantom quadcopter equipped with a camera.

Then he saw it: a juvenile red-tailed hawk circling nearby. Within seconds, it swooped down — wings outstretched, tail flared, talons open — and flipped the drone midair. Mr. Schmidt cut the propellers, and the bird flew off, apparently uninjured. The drone dropped to the ground, undamaged except for a slight bend in its plastic landing gear.

Mr. Schmidt, a 31-year-old software developer, posted a drone's eye video of the encounter on YouTube. It has been viewed about five million times. And it is hardly the only evidence of conflict between animals and so-called unmanned aerial vehicles.

In other videos, ospreys, magpies, sea gulls and geese pursue and attack drones in flight. With a hop and punch, a kangaroo knocks one to the ground. A cheetah chases, leaps and swipes at one. A pugnacious ram head-butts a drone that hovers too low. And a particularly defiant chimpanzee at a zoo in the Netherlands whacks a buzzing intruder out of the sky with a branch.

Drones do seem to trigger a primal reaction, and not just in humans. Why?

---

Original Submission

• some of it is idiots some of it is idiots (Score: 5, Interesting) by khallow on Saturday October 24 2015, @02:21AM

  by khallow (3766) on Saturday October 24 2015, @02:21AM (#253876) Journal

  I looked at all the non-bird ones. The cheetah one is the equivalent of a flying cat toy. The kangaroo one has a drone buzzing right next to a doe and joey. Like all animals that raise their young, the doe acts defensively to protect the joey from the weird flying thing. The chimpanzees are getting buzzed by the drone and react defensively. And the ram is the most idiotic of all. In addition to the drone getting right up in the face of the ram, who tried backing off first before butting it, the pilot then gets too close to the ram and pushes it around with a large stick in order to retrieve the drone (and gets butted for being a jerk). Glancing through the bird cams, the osprey attacked because the drone approached too close to the osprey's nest (and the nest was on a large transmission line too) and the goose attacked because the drone moved right up next to the animal.
  
  So basically, the hawk, seagull and magpie attacks are the only ones that did anything merely because the drone was in the air. All three birds tend to be territorial. Every other one would have drawn an attack, if a human had done the very same thing. If the animal is responding to the drone, then the drone is too close.

  Drones do seem to trigger a primal reaction, and not just in humans. Why?

  So how many people here would have been ok with an unknown, loud drone with whirling propellers coming up to within three feet of you and then following you around that closely? It's personal space.

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+4
  Insightful=1, Interesting=3, Total=4
  Extra 'Interesting' Modifier		0
  Total Score:		5

• Re:some of it is idiots (Score: 2) by hankwang on Saturday October 24 2015, @06:45AM

  by hankwang (100) on Saturday October 24 2015, @06:45AM (#253929) Homepage

  "And the ram is the most idiotic of all."

  From his youtube clips and facebook page, it looks like the ram is actually the drone operator's pet and that they have a good time together.

  https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=-1sZSPCgXbA [youtube.com]

  --
  Avantslash: SoylentNews for mobile [avantslash.org]

  Parent