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The tech world (and the military) might not be able to get enough of unmanned drones right now -- but in fact, humans have been using autonomous flying helpers for a really long time.

They're called birds. And now the latter is being trained to attack the former.


The Dutch National Police force has announced it will train eagles to bring down unmanned drones in the case of an emergency. The idea is to be able to disable a drone that may, for instance, wander into the airspace of an airport or city centre, without the risk of it falling from the sky and onto anyone below.

Anti-drone UAVs are also being developed, of course, but it currently remains arguably simpler and cheaper to use one of nature's greatest hunters rather than one of humanity's least dependable robots to do the job.

The Dutch police are reportedly working with a company called 'Guard From Above', or a translation of that name, to train eagles who can recognise drones and then snatch it with its talons. The eagle then deposits the drone in a space away from civilians. In a specific example, posted to YouTube, the eagle picks out a DJI model, and does so apparently quite effectively.

The police are also working on other methods to take a drone out of the sky, including hacking the drone and simply using a net, or some combination of both, but say the eagle potentially gives them more flexibility once the machine is recovered.

Sadly the police admit in the video that they may require a better way to protect the bird's strong, but hardly rotor-proof talons from being damaged when taking down the drones. On the other hand, eagles in the wild have also shown a natural inclination to attack drones on sight, as have hawks, rams and chimps -- so it might not be the most terrible idea, if the animal's safety can be guaranteed.