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Drone-fired peanut butter pellets: A government plan to save endangered ferrets
- FriedPickles 10y agoCan they not dispense this with existing crop duster aircraft?
- Aelinsaar 10y agoAt a guess, cropdusters are not designed to dispense something as thick and colloidal as peanut butter, and they're designed to maximize coverage. Presumably these animals do better with "pellets" of peanut butter, rather than a fine mist of peanut butter slurry applied evenly over the landscape. Presumably, everyone does better with that.
- mc32 10y agoCropdusters, I believe, used to be able to broadcast either seed or other matter[1], if outfitted properly. So, I think it's possible, they'd just need the right attachment for the belly of the Ag Cat, Snow AT or similar. On the other hand a drone might be cheaper to rent a operate than a personned aircraft. [1]http://reveg-catalog.tamu.edu/09-Seeding.htm#Aircraft_Spreaders http://reveg-catalog.tamu.edu/09-Seeding.htm#Aircraft_Spread...
- Aelinsaar 10y agoHuh, I had no idea that cropduster aircraft were so versatile, I just thought they had tanks and sprayers. Thanks for the info.
- niccaluim 10y agoWay cheaper, and safer.
- mc32 10y agoGood point about the safety. That said, a nice Ag Cat or Snow AT can carry a hefty load of those pellets in the hopper and spread it with venturi or even a centrifugal broadcaster. Probably a ton or two or more?
- niels_olson 10y agoYeah, that was my thought. Cost per hour, drone wins. Cost per pound, above some limit, the plane wins.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoCheaper? Not sure. I recall a thread here once about using drones for agriculture where someone pointed out that they can rent out an aerial op over their fields (not sure whether it was spraying crops or just photographing the field with IR cameras and stuff) for less than it would cost to get a single drone in the discussed project, that would likely require lots of those drones to make sense. Agricultural plane rental in the US seems to be cheap, like taking a cab every now and then is much cheaper than buying a scooter for every member of your family.
- riscy 10y agoLacing food (peanut butter) is a more direct way to administer the vaccine than just spraying it everywhere.
- js2 10y agoAccording to the article: "Matchett says airplanes aren’t quite right for the ferret mission, because the delivery must be precise, and therefore low-flying."
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoAs a bonus, it can be repurposed as a riot control device against disgruntled peanut-allergy sufferers.
- logicallee 10y agoThis is the only unexpectedly hilarious headline I've ever read here at HN. Every word just kept getting better and better.
- berntb 10y agoBeing severely allergic to peanuts, this headline give me more Terminator associations than anything else ("Couldn't they just use normal bullets, this must break some laws about cruel weapons?") :-)
- failrate 10y agoI wish they would do this for people in our flyover states.
- allendoerfer 10y agoI always forget how this sophism is called: "Does not make sense to do x, because y is much worse.", when in reality you can do both. Can someone please help me out?
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- pekk 10y agoWhat do you mean? Do you want to use peanut butter to save endangered Oklahomans, or persecute Kansans with an aerial food assault? Or do you want to increase the ferret population of Nebraska? Do you want to trick Michiganders into consuming vaccines?
- failrate 10y agoI think I was just in a nasty mood think about anti-vaxxers. I wasn't being fair to flyover states.
- mnbcvx 10y agoThe idea of using drones to drop something helpful... What would the world look like now if for the past 15 years drones had been dropping computers, medicine, water purifiers, seeds, etc.? How many millions of parachute-fitted, protective boxes worth of these things could we have dropped for the same amount spent on war?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- paavokoya 10y agoI imagine the refugee crisis wouldn't exist. People with computers rarely go outside.. (but seriously they would be able to work remotely much like the Indian tech sector)
- mnbcvx 10y agoIf we provided these areas with internet access too via satellite or balloon, you would likely have a whole legion of educated young people fixing problems from within their own society, rather than an outside force mostly wreaking havoc despite its intentions. I don't know if the average American would scoff at the idea, but I am dead sure that it would turn out better for everyone than the path we took.
- DKnoll 10y agoDon't forget a reliable power grid. The scope just grows and grows... there are no easy solutions to poverty.
- mnbcvx 10y agoDrop some generators then too! I live in Cambodia, and spend a lot of time out in the provinces where everyone meets up daily to charge their phones and other electronic devices around the single generator in a village. And need I mention that massive bombing campaigns don't exactly facilitate having a reliable power grid. Everything I'm saying would cost peanuts compared to what the US spends on weapons and war.
- dghughes 10y agoRight into their mouths? (yeah, I better read the article)
- laksjd 10y agoOn mobile I immediately get a 'please enter your email address to continue reading' banner. It also seems to be clever enough to realise that 'annoying@washingtonpost.com' is not a valid email to enter. In addition it didn't accept made-up (random string)@gmail.com or even made-up (list of English words)@gmail.com. It seems like a lot of effort was put into this little tool.
- LukasSkywalker 10y agoEntering reading mode on MS Edge Mobile removes the banner.
- pvaldes 10y agommmh... This is an interesting problem that merits to think about it. How to grant that most donated money ends really helping the country instead making rich the local organized delinquents, spoon-feeding the war and supporting the local corrupt nets. We need to attract more creative people as possible to think about how to improve this. I'll propose something. Why if we would use the donated money to condone the same amount of external debt in origin? or maybe to lobby with the goal of stopping unreasonable external debt forever?. Advantages: More simple, no blackmail when crossing customs, no generous international help for lords of war of dictatorships, not money leaked in the travel, more money available to help with the same amount of cash, because you don't need to burn part of your resources to move a team of people to a small country in the middle of nowhere and protect them of being kidnapped or falling ill. No more buying goods in America and spend your money moving it to Tailand when you could buy the same products in Myanmar, less troubles when converting between a lot of currencies...
- yeudongho2612 10y agoI'll propose something. Why if we would use the donated money to condone the same amount of external debt in origin? or maybe to lobby with the goal of stopping unreasonable external debt forever?.
- pvaldes 10y agoRespect to the endangered american polecats, there are a few good ways to save it and a lot of bad ways to try it. Astrid Vargas and other scientists from the Wyoming university strike the right chord when start breeding it in captivity. Fortunately "the lets burn all zoos with pitchforks and torches" current fashion was not so developped then. Between 1987 and 1994, the wild population increased from 0 to a few hundreds and then 6000 ferrets. Since 1994, this woman moved to Doñana and tried to save the iberian linx breeding it for first time. Something that proved to be much more difficult. Both species could be extinct now without people like her (and much other). This said, the access to the article seems restricted and the title didn't help too much to understand the idea. Trying to just "feed" the polecats with pellets looked like a really dumb idea to me, before to read that the real goal is to vaccine them (and to prairie dogs also) against sylvatic plague transmited by fleas. This is a totally different question. Similar things were done before to eliminate rats on NZ islands... Could work. Yersinia pestis was a formidable killer of humans also (is the creature that caused the black death in Europe), so would be a great success for all people living in the area.
- specialist 10y ago..."the lets burn all zoos with pitchforks and torches" current fashion... Ignore the fringes. We need more and bigger zoos, reserves, protected habitat. Any one who disagrees is a fruitcake. I'm as left wing as they come and volunteered for a decade for a conservation group (trying to save wetlands, habitat for birds and fish). I'm a paying member of my local zoo. They have extensive conservation and preservation efforts. They earn my money. Much as I dislike zoos (enclosures are too small for most critters), we need them to serve as gene-reservoirs (arks) and breeding mills.
- kweinber 10y agoAs someone with multiple family members with severe peanut allergies, this sounded nightmarish.