This $500K Robot Army Only Needs to Look, Smell Good

They look, move and even smell like the kind of furry Everglades marsh rabbit a Burmese python would love to eat. But these bunnies are robots meant to lure the giant invasive snakes out of their hiding spots. It's the latest effort by the South Florida Water Management District to eliminate as many pythons as possible from the Everglades, where they are decimating native species, per the AP. In Everglades National Park, officials say the snakes have eliminated 95% of small mammals as well as thousands of birds. "Removing them is fairly simple. It's detection. We're having a really hard time finding them," said Mike Kirkland, lead invasive animal biologist for the water district. "They're so well camouflaged in the field."

The water district and University of Florida researchers deployed 120 robot rabbits this summer as an experiment. Previously, there was an effort to use live rabbits as snake lures but that became too expensive and time-consuming, Kirkland said. The robots—costing about $4,000 each—are simple toy rabbits, but retrofitted to emit heat, a smell and to make natural movements to appear like any other regular rabbit. They are solar powered and can be switched on and off remotely. They are placed in small pens monitored by a video camera that sends out a signal when a python is nearby. "Then I can deploy one of our many contractors to go out and remove the python," Kirkland said.

Pythons are not native to Florida, but have become established in the swampy, subtropical Everglades by escaping from homes or by people releasing them when they become overgrown pets. A female python can lay between 50 and 100 eggs at a time with a gestation period of 60-90 days, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Estimates in the wild range from tens of thousands of pythons up to 300,000. Since 2000, more than 23,000 of the snakes have been removed from the wild, the wildlife commission says. It's too early to determine how successful the robot rabbit project will be, but officials say initial results are a cause for optimism.