Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel bomb here. It's often hard for law enforcement
Speaker 1: to nab a poacher. There are too few of the
Speaker 1: former and too many of the latter on American state lands.
Speaker 1: But officials now have a tool that's helping to catch
Speaker 1: poachers while listening the chance that an animal has to
Speaker 1: die first. An army of taxidermied robotic wildlife has been
Speaker 1: unleashed across the country to help police and game wardens
Speaker 1: stop poachers. The robot animals are made by companies like
Speaker 1: Custom Robotic Wildlife, which use legally acquired animal hides and
Speaker 1: robotic components to create realistic critters. With the touch of
Speaker 1: a remote controlled button, the animals move just enough to
Speaker 1: appear alive a tail twitch or a head turn when
Speaker 1: a poacher lines up a shot on them. At the
Speaker 1: other end of those buttons are officers hiding in the
Speaker 1: bushes or a truck ready to arrest the poachers. Generally,
Speaker 1: the officers have gotten a tip that poachers are in
Speaker 1: the area, so they know where to place the decoys.
Speaker 1: We spoke with Brian Wolves, legal owner of Wisconsin's Custom
Speaker 1: Robotic Wildlife, who's been creating such decoys for law enforcement
Speaker 1: for twenty years. He gets requests almost every day for
Speaker 1: his animals, which range in price from about two thousand
Speaker 1: dollars for a white tailed deer, his most popular animal,
Speaker 1: to nearly five thousand for a moose. Costs include the
Speaker 1: robotics and the packaging. The prices might seem high, but
Speaker 1: wolse Legal notes that the animals can be used for
Speaker 1: many years and take many shots before being retired. So
Speaker 1: how good are these robot animals? We also spoke with
Speaker 1: Jim Reed, the director of Stewardship at the Humane Society
Speaker 1: Wildlife Land Trust. He's the man in charge of its
Speaker 1: Robotic decoy program, which donates robot animals to law enforcement agencies.
Speaker 1: He said, where they have been used very little, they're
Speaker 1: incredibly effective. Where they've been used quite a bit, the
Speaker 1: poachers kind of get used to it. Then the game
Speaker 1: wardens have to change things up a little. That's when
Speaker 1: Wolves Legal gets a call for a new animal, or
Speaker 1: one that moves in a different way. He said, every
Speaker 1: year we build something different because the officers say, I
Speaker 1: hear the poachers say, if just the heads and tails move,
Speaker 1: don't shoot. So then we make an ear move or
Speaker 1: a leg move. I'm working on a white tailed deer
Speaker 1: right now for a federal law enforcement officer. She wants
Speaker 1: one that picks up its tail and poops. How will
Speaker 1: they manage that, you ask? Welst Legal is trying a
Speaker 1: few techniques, he said, We got a little Auger system going.
Speaker 1: I have three kids and they just love this because
Speaker 1: I buy M and M's and they get to eat
Speaker 1: every color except the dark chocolate ones. An auger system
Speaker 1: is a conveyor system to move materials on an incline,
Speaker 1: and as for the brown M and M's, you can
Speaker 1: probably guess what there for. Poaching is a huge problem
Speaker 1: in the United States, and the decoys are great help.
Speaker 1: Read with the Humane Society says they're very effective. They're
Speaker 1: used to target specific crimes such as hunting from roadways,
Speaker 1: hunting out of season, and shooting from a motor vehicle.
Speaker 1: The Humane Society Wildlife Land Trust has donated more than
Speaker 1: thirty robotic decoy is two various enforcement agencies since two
Speaker 1: thousand four. Reid said, in working with game wardens around
Speaker 1: the country, we came to find out these men and
Speaker 1: women don't have the resources they required to do their
Speaker 1: jobs effectively in a lot of cases. The organization plans
Speaker 1: to continue raising funds to donate even more with the
Speaker 1: goal of eventually ending poaching wolves. Legal also builds robotic
Speaker 1: animals for private use. He said, I'm working on a
Speaker 1: sitting red fox for an autistic child with a robotic
Speaker 1: head and tail. He can plug it into the wall
Speaker 1: and away it goes. Today's episode was written by Karen
Speaker 1: Kirkpatrick and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this
Speaker 1: and lots of other topics, visit our home planet, how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com.