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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?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 25 2015, @04:41AM
Alright - I'll give you your first point. Tension lines do strange things sometimes. We had an ice storm here some years back. A lot of electrical crews were brought in from all over the country. One crew of two was on the highline, inspecting the lines. It was raining fairly hard that day. One of them heard the call of nature, stepped out of his truck, looked up and down the clear cut for spectators, unzipped, and cut loose. That was his last act in this life. One of those lines arced out, and burnt him where he stood.
There was simply no reason for that line to arc to ground, a distance of about 25 feet. No reason for it to strike a man below the line. No reason for a urinating man to be struck. Stuff happens. His partner was very clear that it was NOT lightning that struck the man, he saw the arc jump from a tension wire to his partner's head.
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.