Having your face eaten by a lion probably looks a bit like this. Some wildlife photographers thought they’d lost their GoPro camera while tracking some lions – instead, those lions had made off with the camera, licking and chewing it.
Jewel…posed like Kate Moss against magnificent snow-clad peaks. That’s how magazine writer Ted Williams described a recent photo shoot for one of his articles. Just one thing to note: Jewel was a rented three-year-old cougar.
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The ocean is filled with terrifying, deadly predators. Leopard seals – especially this unusually massive one – are chief among them. But as National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen learned last year, not all seals are necessarily out to maul you.
This beautiful photo of a wolf jumping over a fence elicited the usual rabble of “fake!” claims when it won a prestigious wildlife photography competition. The photographer denies the claims, but he’s just been stripped of the award.
Prepare for the upcoming apocalypse when all birds are extinct with these Breezy Singers Robot Birds. They have moving tails and heads, and react to motion and changes in light with their recorded songs that are straight from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. They sit still enough so that they are easily picked off with a shotgun one by one, or you can let them sit there and tweet so they’ll scare away all the real birds, a task they can accomplish a whole lot cheaper than those falcon robot birds we showed you a couple of months ago.
The pigeons in Liverpool are getting out of hand. They’re pooping all over the place, getting fat and happy and generally creating a nuisance. City officials have decided to bring in the Robops, robotic falcons that scare the bejeezus out of the birds that many call “flying rats.”
For dopey pigeons, this $3700 robotic bird looks exactly like their natural predator, the Peregrine Falcon. The robot can move its head around convincingly, flapping its wings from time to time, springing up and down on its legs and even turning toward the wind. Plus, it squawks just enough to send shivers down even the most brave pigeon’s spine. The makers of these robotic falcon decoys have even been experimenting with powering the animatronic birds with solar panels.
We can think of other ways to get rid of those pesky pigeons, though.
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Besides having a massive pigeon hunting season, how about just bringing in lots of real Peregrine Falcons? Oh, that’s right—more birds, more shit. But Liverpudlians say the reason these birds are getting so fat is because people are feeding them burgers and sausage rolls. All that junk food is said to give them a “scruffy appearance,” making them even more unpleasant to have around.
Worse, the birds are generally wreaking havoc in the community, getting in peoples’ faces:
“They fly up at people and they leave droppings everywhere which not only makes the city look really unattractive but can make surfaces slippery and dangerous.”
This is a real problem for Liverpool, spending 88 man hours a day shoveling pigeon droppings. They’re hoping these robots will lighten the load a bit. – Charlie White
Product Page [Robop Limited, via BBC]
