Florida’s battle with invasive Burmese pythons has taken a strange turn straight out of science fiction: robot rabbits.
The South Florida Management District and University of Florida researchers are rolling out a fleet of robotic bunnies. These high-tech solar-powered decoys move, heat up, and even emit a rabbit smell that lures these giant snakes from their hiding places. When a python slithers in to get what it thinks is an easy meal, a nearby video camera sends a signal, and a contractor is sent out to remove the snake.
Each robo-rabbit costs about four grand, but compared to the damage pythons have done, that’s pocket change.
The Toll of Invasive Pythons
The Everglades were once teeming with small mammals and birds, but that changed when careless pet owners started releasing exotic snakes decades ago. A 2012 study by the U.S. Geological Survey found that populations of raccoons had declined by 99.3%, opossums by 98.9%, and bobcats by 87.5% within Everglades National Park. Researchers also found a direct link between the growing number of pythons and the disappearance of marsh rabbits, cottontails, and foxes within the ecosystem.
In short, the snakes have eaten the Everglades. It’s impossible to know the exact number of pythons slithering through the state, but the USGS claims a conservative estimate puts the population in the “tens of thousands.”
Florida has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the problem, from trapping to radio tagging, even sponsoring a public Python Challenge, where snake hunters compete for large cash prizes. More than 23,000 snakes have been removed from the Sunshine State in the past two decades. It’s a dent, but just barely.
The real trick is finding the snakes in the first place.
Robot Rabbits Draw Pythons Out for Trapping
“Removing them is fairly simple. It's detection. We're having a really hard time finding them,” lead invasive animal biologist for the water district, Mike Kirkland told ABC News. “They're so well camouflaged in the field.”
That’s where the robots come in. Instead of hunters scouring the sawgrass looking for snakes, the robo-bunnies are designed to draw them out.
The robotic rabbits are little more than animatronic toys that researchers have hacked with heating elements, scent emitters, solar panels, and remote controls. Add a camera and you’ve got a bait station. When a snake approaches the toy bunny, the camera flags it, and a contractor heads out to remove the python before it swallows the robot.
Florida launched a pilot program this summer with 120 units scattered through the Everglades. The state is also looking at pairing the rabbits with drones, scent-tracking dogs, and old-fashioned boots-on-the-ground hunters.
Kirkland admits it’s still too early to tell if the robo-bunnies will do more than scratch the surface of the state’s python problem.
“This part of the project is in its infancy,” Kirkland said. “We are confident, though, that this will work once we are given enough time to work out some of these details.”
Not everyone is sold. Online critics argue that $4,000 per robot rabbit is a pricey gamble, especially if one ends up accidentally eaten. But researchers aren’t claiming the robo-rabbits are a silver bullet. They’re just another weapon in Florida’s long, ugly war against invasive snakes.
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