
Scaring Animals Can Help Save Them - draenei
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/saving-animals-by-scaring-them/
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jasonkostempski
A few years ago I opened my breezeway door, accidentally scared a rabbit and
it ran right in front of a car :( Now, if I see an animal and what I'm about
to do is going to startle it, I try to position myself, or wait until they're
in a position that it will likely run away from any dangerous things. At the
very least, I wait for traffic to clear.

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mordechai9000
I picked up my son to let him see a moose over a fence, and the startled
animal bolted towards a busy street a short distance away. Fortunately, it
didn't run out in the road.

I felt like such an idiot. I could've killed someone due to one thoughtless
moment. Moose are notoriously stupid when it comes to cars. They become
agitated and alert when approached on foot, but they will stand next to cars
going freeway speeds with no apparent concern or understanding of the danger.

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bayesian_horse
You could develop an automatic paintball turret which shoots at elk. Or the
occasional golfer, when the algorithm fails.

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amarant
the prospect of youtube videos of golfers getting shot by the wildlife
paintball turret alone justifies this idea!

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tetrep
But how can we prevent situations like what happens to coyotes who learn not
to be scared? [http://www.epsilontheory.com/too-clever-by-
half/](http://www.epsilontheory.com/too-clever-by-half/)

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brlewis
From the article: "Other researchers have explored more noxious ideas to drive
animals away from people, including paint balls, rubber bullets, squirt guns,
specially trained dogs and park rangers swinging streamers attached to hockey
sticks. Some of these are effective, some are not. Some animals learn to avoid
human areas but others just learn to avoid rangers with hockey sticks. And
“how much does a paintball hurt a 500- or 1,000-pound animal?” asks Robert
Found, a wildlife expert at Elk Island National Park in Alberta. “That’s not
enough of a stimulus.”"

I think using an unloaded double-barrel shotgun to aim a bottle rocket at a
coyote might be successful at scaring them if a paintball didn't do it.

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rbritton
Many projectile options are likely to only be legal in more rural areas. For
example, our local municipal code states:

    
    
        "No Shooting" means any shotgun, fowling piece, rifle, BB gun, air compression rifle, pellet gun, revolver, pistol, or other firearm which projects any bullet, shot, slug, pellet, BB, or any other missile or projectile of any nature.

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yaleman
Boston dynamics has some funky robots, maybe we can train the animals by
getting robots to wander around scaring them.

... and that's how we accidentally killed off everyone with weak heart.

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krapp
That's fine. We'll need the survivors with their strong cardiovascular systems
to fight the robots off when they attack.

When they grab you with those metal claws, you can't break free.. because
they're made of metal, and robots are strong.

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known
Sounds like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_dwarfism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_dwarfism)

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mikepalmer
I find this method works well with humans too.

