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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, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2015, @04:46AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2015, @04:46AM (#234084)

    They already have. You can practically shred a crown of thorns and each piece will eventually grow into a full-size starfish. That's why they have to inject them, you can't really kill them otherwise.

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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday September 09 2015, @05:12PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday September 09 2015, @05:12PM (#234307)

    Crown-of-thorns-nado just doesn't have a great ring to it. Hollywood will need to wait for real scientists to get closer to adding that power to humans.
    Or maybe read DBZ.