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posted by martyb on Saturday September 05 2015, @10:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the must-have-watched-'King-Kong' dept.

Cool. Calm. And oh, so calculated. That's how a chimpanzee living in the Royal Burgers' Zoo in the Netherlands set out to swat an aerial drone that was filming her group. In an article in the journal Primates² published by Springer, Jan van Hooff and Bas Lukkenaar explain it as yet another example of chimpanzees' make-do attitude to using whatever is on hand as tools.

The incident happened earlier this year, on 10 April, when a Dutch television crew was filming at the zoo in Arnhem. The idea was to use a drone to film the chimpanzees in their compound from different close-up angles. The drone already caught the chimpanzees' attention during a practice run. Some grabbed willow twigs off the ground, while four animals took these along when they climbed up scaffolding where the drone was hovering. This behavior is not frequently observed among these chimps.

Filming started when the next drone flew over. It zoomed in on two chimpanzees, the females Tushi and Raimee. They were still seated on the scaffolding holding on to twigs that were about 180 cm (ca. six feet) long. Tushi made two long sweeps with hers -- the second was successful in downing the drone and ultimately broke it. Before and during the strike, she grimaced. Although her face was tense and her teeth were bared, she showed no signs of fear. This suggests that she quite deliberately and forcefully struck at the drone, rather than fearfully or reflexively.

Fascinating. Evidence that drones do indeed provoke a response in the monkey ape brain, which could explain the drone antipathy felt by many humans. But what is it, a response to hovering insects or predatory birds?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2015, @01:52AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2015, @01:52AM (#232837)

    > But what is it, a response to hovering insects or predatory birds?

    Duh! Drones are noisy as fuck. If that thing had a whisper mode like blue thunder, those chimps would not have given it a passing thought.

    I keep waiting for someone to build noise-cancellation speakers into those guard-rings that most quad-copters have around their rotors. It is nearly the ideal location for them since it is so close to the source of the noise in the first place.

  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday September 06 2015, @02:36AM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Sunday September 06 2015, @02:36AM (#232851) Journal

    That is true they're noisy, but the traction that drone stories get in the media, when most people have never heard a drone in real life, indicates it's not the sound that provokes the antipathy. I hypothesize it has something more to do with social boundaries being crossed. The idea that someone can reach out and touch us by remote control is fundamentally, deeply threatening. Yes, it's been true for a long time that some country somewhere can launch an ICBM on the other side of the world and kill us, but that's too vague. A drone is far more personal, as in, I'm controlling this drone, can see through its eyes, and I am targeting you specifically with my gaze. If the drone were weaponized, it would be an even more severe power imbalance--I can touch you, can kill you, and no matter what you do against this instrument of my will you cannot touch me, cannot see me, and cannot even know where I am controlling this instrument from.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2015, @02:48AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2015, @02:48AM (#232855)

      I can touch you, can kill you, and no matter what you do against this instrument of my will you cannot touch me, cannot see me, and cannot even know where I am controlling this instrument from.

      I don't think those chimps really thought it through that far.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2015, @02:42AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2015, @02:42AM (#232854)

    I believe the thought process was:

    WTF this noisy shit.
    - Great, it's another man-made object.
    - Whoa, looks expensive as hell.
    - Let me get a twig.
    - NOT THE MOMMA NOT THE MOMMA NOT THE MOMMA