"Birds Aren't Real".
Unfortunately, the group behind the "Birds Aren't Real" movement came clean and told everyone that it was just a big meme joke. Their movement gained so much traction though because it was believable. Maybe they took it too far by not taking it far enough and giving factual data.
So the government didn't try to genocide billions of birds and replace them with surveillance drones. It doesn't mean that they aren't just adding drones to the bird mix though. See what they are doing with squirrels on our previous blog post.
"The times have sort of grown around the idea, as the years passed, Birds Aren't Real, fits in more and more with things that are actually happening," McIndoe, founder of the "Birds Aren't Real" movement, says.
Rather than being the stuff of internet memes, some engineers are, in fact, trying to reverse engineer how birds fly to eventually take what they learn to create more efficient bird-like drones.
In fact, it's already been happening since 1907.
Let's start with the pigeon camera.
In 1907 German Julius Neubronner developed the pigeon camera and was patented a year later at the disbelief of the German government that it could be done.
The pigeons and equipment were confiscated from him during the First World War to use for military applications by the German government. Most notably in the Battle of the Somme where mobile dovecotes were extensively used.
After the First World War, the German government informed Julius that the pigeons had no military value and further experiments weren't justified.
Trust the government? Nope.
In 1932 it was reported that the German army was training pigeons for photography, and that the German pigeon cameras were capable of 200 exposures per flight.
In World War II the spy pigeons came back despite what the government told Julius.
According to a report in 1942, the Soviet army discovered abandoned German trucks with pigeon cameras that could take photos in five-minute intervals, as well as dogs trained to carry pigeons in baskets.
Fast forward to the 1970's. The US government has kept a tighter lid on whatever they've been up to in this regard. It wasn't until 2021 that they officially even admitted that they used spy pigeons, then claimed that they were a "failure".
Here is the official declassified video from the CIA:
Yet, the only "declassified" part is that they even had a spy pigeon. They refuse to declassify any of the information about its uses, purpose, or ongoing research into using the birds. So you're telling me that it was a success for the germans in World War I yet somehow decades later the US government can't make a GoPro attached to a bird successful? And that it was such a failure that they won't even tell us what it was used for? The Germans tried this ploy with Julius making him feel his invention was worthless and kept it going. Sounds like history repeating to me. There's no way we aren't still using spy birds with over 100 years of technology and research behind it currently.
According to Professor Baumann, Emeritus Professor of Geography:
"United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) developed a spy pigeon operation in the 1970s and gave it the codename "Tacana." Although the details of this operation are still classified, the CIA has made some information available. A battery-powered pigeon camera was developed and is now displayed in the CIA Museum's virtual tour. Various news reports indicate that the camera was used in the 1970s and during a testing period pigeons were released from a plane. Test missions showed that the pigeons were very effective and nearly half of the 140 pictures on the roll of film were of good quality. Although no pictures have been made available, CIA remote sensing analysts have stated that people can be clearly identified and the quality of the photography was better than that from the spy satellites operating at the time. The pigeons were to be used against particular targets in the Soviet Union. They were going to be secretly shipped to Moscow. The CIA had several different methods for how to release them. It is not known if Tacana was implemented.The use of pigeons to take aerial photographs is viewed by some as the beginning of the current drone technology."
Anyway, we will keep searching for proof of spy birds and their modern uses.
Current "declassified" applications by other companies? Let's look at those.
"Through millions of years of evolution, nature has developed processes, objects, materials and functions to increase its efficiency. So whatever we see in current life, is a treasure of millions of years," says Mostafa Hassanalian, a mechanical engineer at New Mexico Tech.
The result?
Taxidermy Bird Drones. They have been in research since 2009.
According to NPR, "The lessons researchers are learning from birds could translate into better drones. Along with the structure of bird wings, the coloration of some birds allows them to coast in the air more efficiently. Many seabirds, like albatrosses, have black feathers on the top of their wings and white on the bottom, which heats the air on top of the bird and generates lift.
Birds also save energy by being more flexible than human devices. For instance, modern planes are chock full of devices to measure changes in the environment around them. "That means many motors, many sensors and a complicated control loop – so many moving parts and that's just not possible," says David Lentink, an engineer at the University of Groningen."
Just like the squirrels, outfitting birds with current technology is already happening.
According to The Guardian, In a trial using technology shared by New Zealand and France, 169 albatrosses were fitted with radar detection tags in November 2018 and released to the south of the Indian Ocean to spot illegal fishing.
Of 353 radar contacts made, about 30% were from vessels that had turned off their positioning systems. If they were in national waters, that was a likely sign of illegal activity, the researchers reported.
Great job, bird spies!
Here's a new invention that's a little less creepy than dead bird zombies with an endoskeleton.
Look at this! It's not equipped with a spy camera (yet) but you can have your own bird drone at home! Now you can join the ranks of government spy. Let us know if you do. For you know. . Research.
And don't forget to watch the live possibility of bird spies on our webcam
As always,
I am Snickers
I am truth.
Комментарии