This cute baby-bear video reveals a problem with drones


[ad_1]

But when biologists started watching the video, they saw a very different story.

The video, they say, was clearly captured by a drone. And they saw the work of an irresponsible drone operator who, while trying to film the bears, plunged them into a dangerous situation that almost cost his life to the cub. "I had a lot of trouble watching," says Sophie Gilbert, an ecologist at the University of Idaho, who studies including the impact of drones on wildlife. "This showed a flagrant lack of understanding on the part of the drone operator as to the effects of his actions on the bears." (This was not just scientists, either; drone pilots were also dismayed by the footage.)

The only information accompanying the video indicates that she was captured on June 19, 2018 in the Magadan region of Russia. Nobody knows who fired, what drone was used, or how far away it flew. But "no matter the distance, it was because I can tell the behavior of the bears that it was too close," said Clayton Lamb of the University of Alberta, who is studying grizzly bears in the Canadian Rockies and uses drones. map the area where they live.

The setting of the video is already suspect, says Lamb. With such a small and vulnerable cub, it is highly unlikely that a mother would choose to cross such a steep and slippery slope. "There is no reason for a woman to accept this risk unless she is forced to," says Lamb. Throughout the video, he notes, the mother constantly looks at the drone and is clearly embarrassed by her presence. At one point, the sequence gets bigger, probably because the drone was getting closer. This, explains Lamb, explains why the mother chokes unexpectedly at the child, making him fall. She probably read the approach of the drone as a kind of attack and tried to repel her child.

It can, as some biologists have suggested, analyzed it as an eagle (and indeed, the shadow of a bird of prey is visible in the video). But Lamb suspects that his concerns were simpler: a strange, noisy object was coming closer. noisy.

Wildlife filmmakers have also turned to drones, using them to capture snaps of dolphins frolicking in Planet Earth II Galapagos sea lions in search of yellowfin tuna Blue Planet II. But documentary teams often include naturalists who are sensitive to the behavior of their subjects. "As we get technology that allows the common user to collect these shots, people who are not professionals can abuse it to get a home copy. Earth video, says Lamb.

[ad_2]Source link