Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/04/29/drone-disguised-as-hummingbird.html
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*hummingbird
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Is the second camera, the one filming the hummingbird-cam filming the butterflies, also camouflaged as a hummingbird?
Mainly I’m just unconvinced that this facade was necessary in the first place.
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Ah, no wonder I couldn’t spot it!
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Also, the drone has a fixed focus camera. So what’s up with the dramatic shots at 2:42 where the background is out of focus?
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The hummingbird drone is being filmed from a fixed camera at a distance. If you look at the shots, they pan and tilt, but never dolly or change elevation. They’re also much higher quality. That camera position would never have got into the swarm at the end, and a larger drone would likely be far more disturbing to the butterflies.
Edit: We’re pulling apart footage of a beautiful scene in nature. Quarantine is a hell of a drug.
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this is some Les Machines de l’Ile stuff here.
Yeah, especially since it’s not much of a facade, even. It’s a drone - it’s making a loud whirring noise, it’s not shaped like a hummingbird, nor particularly colored like one, either. To a butterfly, that’s seeing in UV and has radically different ways of detecting air motion (sound, wind) than we do, I’m sure it seems nothing like a hummingbird at all.
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I has a squeee!
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Impressive, both the method of observation and the spectacle of life. Thank you so much for sharing.
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The most fascinating part of the monarch migration to me is that it takes longer than the butterflies live. They have to stop and breed on the way.
The butterflies that finish are not the ones that start.
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Wow. Just…wow.
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Very beautiful.
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They should fly this drone near a busy hummingbird feeder!
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