Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Animals Spy a New Enemy: Drones

posted by cmn32480 on Saturday October 24 2015, @01:17AM   Printer-friendly
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

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Animals Spy a New Enemy: Drones | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 25 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday October 24 2015, @02:58AM

    by frojack (1554) on Saturday October 24 2015, @02:58AM (#253885) Journal

    Apparently you disagree with the dictionary.

    http://www.thefreedictionary.com/manned [thefreedictionary.com]
    http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/manned [reference.com]
    and several others...

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   2  

  • (Score: 4, Touché) by maxwell demon on Saturday October 24 2015, @06:42AM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday October 24 2015, @06:42AM (#253927) Journal

    So you can do a manned space flight by sending a remote-controlled robot to space?

    Actually satellites are human-controlled, too (sure, they do some things automatically, but so does the typical quadcopter; most people would not be able to fly a truly manually controlled quadcopter), So I get satellite missions are manned space flight missions?

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.

    • (Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday October 24 2015, @07:28AM

      by edIII (791) on Saturday October 24 2015, @07:28AM (#253938)

      Awwwwwwwwwww..... you beat me to it :)

      --
      Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 24 2015, @05:12PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday October 24 2015, @05:12PM (#254032) Journal
    The definitions you mention neglect that the human operator or whatever has to be present on the vehicle in order for it to be manned. That's just the way it is.