Just when you think you’ve heard it all, you learn that robot bunnies are hopping around the Everglades. Why? To lure invasive Burmese pythons out of their hiding spots in Florida, of course.
Invasive species like Burmese pythons compete unfairly with native species for resources. This makes it difficult for species that are supposed to be there to thrive. Florida has been fighting these massive snakes for a long time. There are even competitions for python hunters, which encourage people to trap these disruptive animals. But robot bunnies?
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“They look, move and even smell like the kind of furry Everglades marsh rabbit a Burmese python would love to eat,” wrote ABC News in a Facebook post. “But these bunnies are robots.”
The South Florida Water Management District has been using a small army of these remote-controlled, solar-powered bunnies this summer to help officials find the snakes. (And detection is the hardest part, thanks to the pythons’ impressive camouflage.) When a robot bunny detects a snake, it sends out a signal, and the water district then deploys someone to go catch the snake.
Take a look at an example of one of the robot bunnies being used to hunt pythons in the Everglades:
Header stock image of the Everglades by Diana Robinson Photography/Getty Images