Scientists Retool Dead Birds Into Uncanny Drones That Blend Into The Wild

It’s a bird… it’s a plane! Nope. It’s just a stiff, dead bird.

Forget spy balloons, a team of researchers led by Mostafa Hassanalian, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at New Mexico Tech, proposes transforming taxidermied avians into birdlike drones that can go incognito for wildlife observation… or even as military spy agents.

In case you’re wondering, yes, the scientists have assembled a few of these drones themselves with real-life deceased bird parts—a head from here, and feathers and wings from there. Some of the species that make up the winged Frankenstein’s monsters include pheasants, pigeons, hummingbirds, and crows. The drones were then put through two flight tests.

The scientific community often looks to wildlife and nature for inspiration, but developing drones out of bird corpses was pretty “difficult,” reveals the team, which has published its research on the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech Forum.

While the freakish UAVs can hover and glide without flapping their wings, they don’t move as gracefully or nimbly as live birds, which could trigger suspicion from the eagle-eyed.

At the same time, bird parts offer immediacy to the notoriously tricky process of deigning UAV wings, the researchers justify. Plus, these Weekend at Birdie’s candidates can be sent into nature without ruffling the feathers of alive wild birds.

But don’t count your eggs before they hatch—the bird drones still require additional work to truly take off, such as greater wing articulation.

The next step could be to give the psuedo-fowls legs so they can perch and discreetly observe without using up too much of their battery, the team notes.

[via Futurism, New Scientist, Popular Science, The Independent, cover photo 42726144 © Steven Oehlenschlager | Dreamstime.com]