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Scientists Develop Killer Robots That Inject Poison Into Coral Munching Starfish

posted by janrinok on Wednesday September 09 2015, @03:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the needle-match dept.

Sir Finkus writes:

Scientists hoping to preserve coral reefs have developed an autonomous submarine to help control populations of crown-of-thorns sea stars. The sea stars devour coral at alarming rates, and are surprisingly hardy. Missing limbs simply regrow after being removed, so scuba divers have had to resort to injecting the starfish with poison up to 10 times each.

The autonomous robot can stay underwater for up to six hours, and uses a new poison that requires only one injection. The robot identifies the sea stars using a sophisticated image processing algorithm. The new poison is allegedly harmless to other sea creatures.

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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2015, @04:04AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2015, @04:04AM (#234075)

    Why not let the starfish eat the coral, then we have reefs made out of starfish instead. Evolution in action, eggheads.

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday September 09 2015, @04:11AM

    by c0lo (156) on Wednesday September 09 2015, @04:11AM (#234078) Journal

    Why not let the starfish eat the coral, then we have reefs made out of starfish instead. Evolution in action, eggheads.

    Because those starfish are thorny. And they'll scare the shit out of sharks to such a degree they'll evolve land-dwelling creatures that will come and hunt us.
    Oh, wait, never mind... we already adapted to that... just look at how many banksters, lawyers and politicians we support.

    --
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  • (Score: 2) by Username on Wednesday September 09 2015, @05:27AM

    by Username (4557) on Wednesday September 09 2015, @05:27AM (#234093)

    If coral gets killed off who is Rick going to protect every episode?

  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday September 09 2015, @06:28AM

    by maxwell demon (1608) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 09 2015, @06:28AM (#234113) Journal

    How else would you test autonomous poison-injecting robots without raising suspicion?</conspiracy-theory>

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