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Deterrence of birds with an artificial predator, the RobotFalcon
Collisions between birds and airplanes can damage aircrafts, resulting in delays and cancellation of flights, costing the international civil aviation industry more than 1.4 billion US dollars annually. Driving away birds is therefore crucial, but the effectiveness of current deterrence methods is l...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9597169/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36285436 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2022.0497 |
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author | Storms, Rolf F. Carere, Claudio Musters, Robert van Gasteren, Hans Verhulst, Simon Hemelrijk, Charlotte K. |
author_facet | Storms, Rolf F. Carere, Claudio Musters, Robert van Gasteren, Hans Verhulst, Simon Hemelrijk, Charlotte K. |
author_sort | Storms, Rolf F. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Collisions between birds and airplanes can damage aircrafts, resulting in delays and cancellation of flights, costing the international civil aviation industry more than 1.4 billion US dollars annually. Driving away birds is therefore crucial, but the effectiveness of current deterrence methods is limited. Live avian predators can be an effective deterrent, because potential prey will not habituate to them, but live predators cannot be controlled entirely. Thus, there is an urgent need for new deterrence methods. We developed the RobotFalcon, a device modelled after the peregrine falcon, and tested its effectiveness to deter flocks of corvids, gulls, starlings and lapwings. We compared its effectiveness with that of a drone, and of conventional methods routinely applied at a military airbase. The RobotFalcon scared away bird flocks from fields immediately, and these fields subsequently remained free of bird flocks for hours. The RobotFalcon outperformed the drone and the best conventional method at the airbase (distress calls). Importantly, there was no evidence that bird flocks habituated to the RobotFalcon over the course of the fieldwork. We conclude that the RobotFalcon is a practical and ethical solution to drive away bird flocks with all advantages of live predators but without their limitations. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9597169 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-95971692022-10-26 Deterrence of birds with an artificial predator, the RobotFalcon Storms, Rolf F. Carere, Claudio Musters, Robert van Gasteren, Hans Verhulst, Simon Hemelrijk, Charlotte K. J R Soc Interface Life Sciences–Engineering interface Collisions between birds and airplanes can damage aircrafts, resulting in delays and cancellation of flights, costing the international civil aviation industry more than 1.4 billion US dollars annually. Driving away birds is therefore crucial, but the effectiveness of current deterrence methods is limited. Live avian predators can be an effective deterrent, because potential prey will not habituate to them, but live predators cannot be controlled entirely. Thus, there is an urgent need for new deterrence methods. We developed the RobotFalcon, a device modelled after the peregrine falcon, and tested its effectiveness to deter flocks of corvids, gulls, starlings and lapwings. We compared its effectiveness with that of a drone, and of conventional methods routinely applied at a military airbase. The RobotFalcon scared away bird flocks from fields immediately, and these fields subsequently remained free of bird flocks for hours. The RobotFalcon outperformed the drone and the best conventional method at the airbase (distress calls). Importantly, there was no evidence that bird flocks habituated to the RobotFalcon over the course of the fieldwork. We conclude that the RobotFalcon is a practical and ethical solution to drive away bird flocks with all advantages of live predators but without their limitations. The Royal Society 2022-10-26 /pmc/articles/PMC9597169/ /pubmed/36285436 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2022.0497 Text en © 2022 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Life Sciences–Engineering interface Storms, Rolf F. Carere, Claudio Musters, Robert van Gasteren, Hans Verhulst, Simon Hemelrijk, Charlotte K. Deterrence of birds with an artificial predator, the RobotFalcon |
title | Deterrence of birds with an artificial predator, the RobotFalcon |
title_full | Deterrence of birds with an artificial predator, the RobotFalcon |
title_fullStr | Deterrence of birds with an artificial predator, the RobotFalcon |
title_full_unstemmed | Deterrence of birds with an artificial predator, the RobotFalcon |
title_short | Deterrence of birds with an artificial predator, the RobotFalcon |
title_sort | deterrence of birds with an artificial predator, the robotfalcon |
topic | Life Sciences–Engineering interface |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9597169/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36285436 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2022.0497 |
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