When a hawk turns innovation upside down...
 |
By AllisonMiller (Own work)
[CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons |
When a hawk strikes, Amazon may need to go back to the R&D lab to discuss the future of drone delivery, hawk altercations and who really owns the sky.
If you live in Cambridge, Massachusetts over by Magazine Beach Park and would jump at the chance of drone delivery the minute Amazon launches it's service Prime Air be aware that what you ordered might be lost in mid-air.
Amazon's goal for it's drone service is to get deliveries into customers hands within thirty minutes but, by the looks of this video, they may have to have someone on the ground with a net and a hand-off to a bike messenger if this hawk has anything to say about it.
Although the owner of the quadicopter, Christopher Schmidt, doesn't have anything to do with Amazon, his video demonstrates a situation that Amazon maybe hasn't thought about yet.
Hawks are formidable birds. When Canadian ornthologist Louis Lefebvre announced a method of measureing avian IQ with regards towards their innovation in feeding habits, hawks were named among the most intelligent birds based on his scale. With eyesight eight times more acute than humans, muscular legs, powerful claws, wing spans of nearly four feet and sharply hooked bills it's no wonder this drone lost the battle.
And, if there is any question of their fierce determination, one could ask Fat Eddie. Legend has it, or rather the New York Daily News has it that the fifteen pound fat-cat was snatched by a determined hawk who managed to carry his prey fifty feet away until dropping Eddie from five stories in the air where he landed on a neighbors umbrella bouncing into the garden and surviving.
 |
A very lucky cat indeed, Fat Eddie. Image: Joanna Molloy, New York Daily News
|
 |
| Image: Christopher Schmidt, YouTube, http://crschmidt.net/ |
1 comments
Great stuff.
ReplyDelete