Hillery Alley
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It's taken science years to advance robotics to the point where we're able to create tiny machines to do our voyeuristic bidding. And what's a better way to use this expensive technology than to engage in some good ole' fashioned skullduggery with unsuspecting wildlife?
Nature photographer Michael Nichols was faced with the task of finding a way to accurately and closely monitor lions in their natural habitat, because photographing them close up and at ground level would likely end with him coiled in a pile of steamy destiny on Pride Rock. However, he and National Geographic came up with a perfect solution -- make a robot take the pictures for them.
National Geographic
Nobody cares if a robot gets eaten. Robots have no souls.
So, in order to capture this incredible footage, they used flying drones and WALL-E robots that roll along the ground and confuse the shit out of the lions.
National Geographic
Notice all the lions staring up in a "What the screaming shit is that?" pose.
But lions are just really big cats, after all, so they eventually grew accustomed to having cameras in their faces taking pictures of them for the internet every second of the day.
National Geographic
Honestly, the camouflage is just asinine at this point.
Except, of course, when they're trying to get laid.
National Geographic
"Hey. WALL-E. Scram."
"... No, let-- let them watch."
The US Army has commissioned a state-of-the-art robotic bird called the Robo Raven to be used as a spy drone, presumably against enemies who are either blind or have never seen a real bird before.
UMDRobotics
Truly, it is an uncanny mimic.
So are they using this incredible, groundbreaking technology to infiltrate terrorist cells and keep the world safe? Nope. They are using it to screw with local birds, because remote controlled science makes us all nine years old.
UMDRobotics
Luckily they were able to suppress the urge to drop fake poop.
Hawks try to attack the damn thing, while smaller birds like crows and seagulls try to fly in formation with it, because it's best to buddy-up to the weird scary new guy if you can't kick his ass.
To answer the timeless question "Are zebrafish more or less afraid of robots when they're drunk (the fish, not the robots)?", scientists at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University recently dumped ethanol into a pool full of zebrafish and unleashed a robotic doppelganger of the zebrafish's mortal enemy, the Indian leaf fish, upon them.
NYU-Poly
See those eyes? No. Soul.
In a shocking discovery, the researchers observed that the zebrafish were less scared of the robot when they were drunk than they were when they were sober (the fish, not the researchers). The fish also tended to move slower in their efforts to retreat from a simulated heron attack, presumably because they kept dropping their phones while trying to text their ex-girlfriends.
Geese have been polluting Canada's beautiful Ottawa beaches with their poop, so much so that one beach recently had to be closed down due to sky-high e-coli levels in the water. City officials agreed that this was a tall, frothy glass of Nas-Tea, and that something must be done about it. So they commissioned a remote control Irritation-Class hexacopter to patrol the beaches and play loud predator noises to scare away all the geese.
AFP
And by "predator noises", we mean "sound clips from the movie Predator".
The owner of this flying knight, Steve Wambolt, originally presented his robot as an aerial photography service, but officials quickly realized that his idea was dumb and saw way more potential in using the hexacopter as a bird-scaring device. Wambolt was paid $30,000 to clear the beaches of geese with his lumbering, expensive toy. The results were so effective that they plan on hiring him again next year, meaning that, once again, a grown man will be paid a modest annual salary to scare birds with a remote control helicopter for a few months.
