Comments on: Cool Spy Animals

By: nicky

nicky — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 00:32:11 +0000

Yes, mammals in general are more into smell than vision. Moreover, a meerkat poses special problems. Meerkats are highly social and apparently they have the highest intraspecies killing rates of all.
I suspect that if ‘recognised’ as another meerkat it will quickly be killed.
If not recognised as a meerkat, and habituated as non threatening, one might just as well sit, walk and film with the troops.
Nevertheless, absolutely wonderful robotics!

By: Lee Knuth

Lee Knuth — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 22:52:19 +0000

Just finished watching Nature series on our PBS station. They featured these spy animals and managed to get incredible footage. Sometimes technology can be a good thing for nature.

By: Mark R.

Mark R. — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 22:50:36 +0000

In reply to Heather Hastie. I wonder if other animals can tell it's not real more by scent than appearance. I bet a plushy with the animal's scent would work better than a realistic puppet w/o the scent. Just a theory which is mine. Cool work all the same. Thanks for the post Heather!

By: Amy Carparelli

Amy Carparelli — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 22:11:08 +0000

From a science perspective the spy animals allow us to:

1: The opportunity to see wildlife up close and personal without alerting the animals/creatures so we can observe their behaviour in their natural habitat (including travelling with them as they move).

2: We get to study how animals interact with each other.

3: To observe and study how the animals react/behave towards the animatronic animals. As seen with spy otter, spy penguins, spy tortoise and many others.

Being able to view amazing footage up close.

—
“The aim of this series was to capture these elusive moments where animals do something so extraordinary that it makes us consider our own connection with the natural world.”
John Downer, Executive Producer of ‘Spy In The Wild’

By: Heather Hastie

Heather Hastie — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 19:36:25 +0000

In reply to GravelInspectorAidan. I saw a clip earlier in the week in which an elephant spent some time checking out a tortoise cam before crushing it. I think the elephant had sussed it wasn't real.

By: GravelInspectorAidan

GravelInspectorAidan — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 14:27:39 +0000

There has been a flurry of such programmes on the Beeb for the last few months, and a previous one a year or two ago (ISTR a “PenguinCam” episode). I guess they’re now being sold to the rest of the world.
There have been criticisms of the science behind them. Even realistic-looking (to us) imitations probably look very fake to the target animals. In robotics, aimed at humans, they describe an idea called “uncanny valley”, where as machines become more humanoid, they actually become more disturbing to human viewers. It’s also fairly significantly variable with culture – the Japanese seem to be much less disturbed by (or more willing to make) teenage-schoolgirl-bots than would be acceptable in the West.
It’s reasonable to anticipate that other species would be disturbed by something that looks somewhat like a species member, but which moves extremely jerkily, doesn’t smell right, doesn’t make the right noises at the right times, and has all the incorrect social cues of a Japanese business magnate at St Trinians. Certainly such charges have been laid against the “Spy Animals” type programmes, and such questions dog the scientific usefulness of using such technologies for observing “undisturbed behaviour” of the animals in question. In comparison, a boring camera-in-a-box type of “trail cam” rarely elicits more than a disinterested sniff before the target animals classify the camera under “inedible, non-threatening” and ignore it.
I haven’t watched many of the programmes, because they don’t really interest me (and I normally like “nature” programmes). However I think there was a bit of a fuss a week or two back over a “lemur cam” in which programme many people identified a plethora of alarm calls and signs of distress in the footage released.
No doubt they’re good programmes – the BBC have been doing this sort of thing for a half-century or more and have built a huge pool of freelancer talent they and the rest of the world can draw on – but for some reason, not my cup of tea. Or coffee. Or carob.

By: rickflick

rickflick — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 04:49:33 +0000

😎