Monkeys Protect Air Base from Bird Strikes

By Marc Lallanilla | May 05, 2014 04:09pm ET

In the annals of war, animals have answered the call of duty more than once.

There were the Mongolian horses that carried Genghis Khan and his invaders into battle, the elephants that took Hannibal's troops across the Alps and into Italy, and the dogs of war that have served faithfully as attack dogs, scouts, trackers and sentries.

Enter a new animal helper: the macaque monkey, which is now serving the People's Liberation Army of China by protecting an air base from birds, according to the Washington Post.

Continued

Birds, echidnas and turtles in plane firing line

• Incidents involving planes hitting animals on the rise
• Bird strikes have increased from 400 to 980 in a decade
• Animals in the firing line include kangaroos, turtles

THE rate of Australian aircraft hitting birds has increased sharply in the past decade, with data showing that even kangaroos, wombats and turtles are occasionally involved in accidents.

An Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) report noted that more than 1750 birdstrikes occurred in 2011, mostly involving "high capacity'' aircraft which have more than 38 seats, compared with 780 in 2002.

"For high capacity aircraft operations, reported bird strikes have increased from 400 to 980 over the last 10 years of study,'' it said, giving these planes a strike rate of more than nine per 10,000 movements in 2011.

Domestic aircraft such as Boeing 737s and Airbus A320s were the most likely to hit a bird, with take-off and landing the danger times, the report said.

"It is likely that the speed and size of these aircraft, longer take-off and landing rolls, and large turbofan engines are factors contributing to the higher rate,'' it said.

Bats or flying foxes are the creatures most commonly hit, while birds in the lapwing and plover families were also recurring victims along with the bright-pink galah cockatoo.

The report noted that only 12 incidents of bird strikes had resulted in serious damage between 2002 and 2011 and only seven caused injury.

This included one instance in which a flying fox crashed through a helicopter windscreen, hitting the pilot in the face and leaving him with minor injuries.

Animal strikes were relatively rare, with hares and rabbits most likely to be involved, along with kangaroos, wallabies, dogs and foxes.

Other animals to have been hit included echidnas, turtles which strayed onto runways and in one instance, an emu.

In one of the worst accidents a microlight hit several wallaroos, an animal similar to a kangaroo, when a group jumped onto airstrip into the path of the powered hang-glider.

The impact caused the pilot to lose control, skidding along a gravel strip, leaving him with a broken lower back and ankle, fractured eye socket, broken nose and severe cuts.

The report detailed several other instances of bird strike including a helicopter hitting a wedge-tailed eagle with its rotor blades, forcing it to land in a grassy area that was then set alight by the helicopter's exhaust.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/archive/travel-old/birds-echidnas-and-turtles-in-plane-firing-line/story-e6frg8ro-1226384844237

Are an animal's rights more important than a person's safety in the air?

Recently, there have been at least two more incidents of bird strikes causing airliners to make emergency landings. Inevitably -- and understandably -- references are immediately drawn to the "miracle on the Hudson" where a flight out of La Guardia lost all engines due to ingesting a flock of geese.

While bird strikes are rare, these latest incidents give rise to calls for increased efforts to reduce birds in areas around airports. But this has churned up the usual suspects who have the weird belief that a Canada goose has the same rights to air space around LaGuardia as passengers on a 737 heading to Vegas.

Let's cut to the bottom line: any factor that threatens the safety of air travel must be address to the fullest extent reasonably possible. So if there is a bird sanctuary or avian nesting area that generates or attracts flying creatures which may even distantly represent a threat to air safety, there is only one option: remove it. Birds can go live and play and make little birds someplace else.

But, of course, there are the folks who get outraged, babbling about how such actions violates these animal's "rights." Can somebody clue these people in to the fact that animals do not have co-equal rights with humans? Animals don't have rights at all, as a matter of fact. Humans do, because they have agreed to such a system. 

But animals? Please, I've never seen a depiction of, or heard about, a moose being a signatory to the Magna Carta. And, I can make no references to the contribution made by any furry or four-legged creature at the Constitutional Convention.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/05/13/are-animal-rights-more-important-than-person-safety-in-air/#ixzz1ulsuFrUu