In one extreme case, the remote-controlled fliers caused a bear’s heart rate to spike from 39 to 162 beats a minute, a whopping 400 percent increase, says study leader Mark Ditmer of the University of Minnesota. That’s well above the heart-beat jump experienced by people riding a double-corkscrew roller coaster.
“This is a region where bears are constantly exposed to farm equipment noises, roads, traffic; they’re regularly racing across open areas to get from forest fragment to forest fragment,” Ditmer says. “We thought they’d seen everything.”
But, he says, “Drones have different sounds and different capabilities. They can fly under the forest canopy, they can get very close, and even follow an individual.”
As drones become more common across U.S. skies, for recreation, business, and conservation projects, scientists are starting to ask the question of how they may impact wildlife.
Welcome to drone day on the Adafruit blog. Every Monday we deliver the latest news, products and more from the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), quadcopter and drone communities. Drones can be used for video & photography (dronies), civil applications, policing, farming, firefighting, military and non-military security work, such as surveillance of pipelines. Previous posts can be found via the #drone tag and our drone / UAV categories.
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