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1 .This is Scientific American 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata. Got a minute?
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2 .Studying birds for a living might sound like a cool job.
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3 .But it's not without its logistical challenges, for us landbound animals.
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4 ."I had a northern gannet, so a really large bird, breeding on the top of the cliff."
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5 .David Gremillet, a seabird ecologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research.
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6 ."And from the bottom of the cliff I couldn't see what was happening in that nest.
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7 .I couldn't even see whether the bird was home or not."
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8 .Gremillet says technology offers a simple solution: "A drone carefully flown at high altitude over the colony would have been really helpful."
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9 .That's right - a drone.
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10 .Gremillet says scientists and citizens alike are increasingly using drones to approach birds--either for fun or legitimate research.
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11 .But they're taking flight without knowing how the aerial robots might affect their avian study subjects.
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12 .So Gremillet and his colleagues hit the zoo, employing a professional drone pilot to fly test runs near mallard ducks with a 14-inch-diameter quadcopter.
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13 .They then got permission to repeat the experiment on wild flamingos and greenshanks in the Camargue, a huge wetland in southern France.
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14 .After several hundred flights, the researchers found that the birds didn't seem to care about the drones' color, or approach speed.
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15 .And the equipment could get as close as 13 feet to the birds without disturbing them,
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16 .as long as they didn't approach from overhead, an angle associated with predators.
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17 .The study is in the journal Biology Letters.
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18 .All these hi-tech tools could be a boon to wildlife ecologists.
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19 ."But at the same time you always have to assess the impact of the technology you're using on animal welfare."
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20 .And maybe drone welfare too.
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21 .Search YouTube and you'll find that birds of prey, like some privacy advocates, perceive drones as a threat, and make the technology crash, literally.
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22 .Thanks for the minute, for Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.
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