Here at 3D Rapid Print, one of the fastest growing 3D Printing companies in the Thames Valley, we like to keep abreast of the latest innovations in 3D printing.
On April 7th 2022, business magazine Fast Company spoke of the Techno-Tortoise project from Hardshell Labs of Haines, Alaska, which uses 3D printed decoy tortoise shells to gather data on raven strikes and counter-attack with a non-toxic spray. The company is run by Tim Shields, an Alaskan field biologist with more than 30 years’ experience studying tortoise behaviour and populations.
Fast Company contended that human activity has resulted in ravens invading the deserts of the western U.S., damaging its ecosystems. This especially threatens the desert tortoise, as ravens prey on young ones before their shells are fully formed by poking their beaks through the shell as the tortoise surfaces to escape high ground temperatures. Fast Company argued that tortoises have to do this, as in the spring they need to eat to help ossify their shell to make themselves less vulnerable to predators in the long run.
Hardshell Labs’ decoys can track ravens poking around at them with their internal sensors and cameras, collecting data about when, where and how ravens are attacking, as well as the threat’s severity. Using the data collected from their fake shells deployed en masse in 2018 and 2019, Shields’ team calculated that a single raven per 2.5 square kilometres of desert was enough to ensure that the local tortoise population would go extinct.
Hardshell Labs collaborated with defence manufacturing company Cornerstone Research Group of Miamisburg, Ohio, who installed electronic accelerators and canisters of liquid inside the shells. If the ravens get aggressive, the shell sprays a non-toxic irritant called methyl anthranilate, an artificial grape flavouring and bird repellent. Hardshell Labs is now testing how well the weaponised prototypes work, having trialled 5 last year and another 10 thus far this year.
For further work, Hardshell Labs intends to make its 3D printed fake tortoise shells even more deceptive. Shields wants to make a robot tortoise that can move, or whose head can poke out its shell and wiggle. He has also considered making the concept into a game, such that players would control the decoy shells and potentially fire the bird repellent.
3D printing is an amazing tool. It can grow your small business or start a mini revolution in an industry. Explore what it can do for you when you contact us today.
Disclaimer: Featured image of “Osman Hamdi Bey – The Tortoise Trainer – Google Art Project” is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art. The author of the work of art itself died in 1910, ergo it is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 100 years or fewer.
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