Wind turbines play an important dual role in humanity’s present and future. One, they are a symbol of our continued effort to save the planet through simple yet innovative green energy breakthroughs. Two, they act as giant mid-air food processors that pulverize the dastardly creatures we call birds.
In an effort to clean up that one pesky downside of wind turbines, converting birds from a state of solid matter to a fine red mist, one research team, which published its findings in Behavioral Ecology, detailed by Popular Science, is trying to do something about it by making wind turbine blades look like an animal birds naturally try to avoid.
Researchers from the University of Helsinki and the University of Exeter tested whether birds would avoid wind turbines painted with patterns inspired by the colors worn by venomous coral snakes and poison dart frogs. Clearly, the birds don’t get that wind turbine blades are antithetical to a continued existence, so why not doll them up with a coat of paint that reminds them of something they’re terrified of?
While birds colliding with wind turbine blades is a real problem, some critics like to wildly exaggerate it, to the point where they make it seem like they’re creating deaths on par with factory farming chickens. Turbines kill an estimated 2 to 6 birds and 4 to 7 bats per megawatt generated annually. Those numbers aren’t catastrophic for common bird species, but for endangered ones, any amount of deaths is a big deal.
What If Wind Turbine Blades Looked Like Snakes
To test solutions, researchers showed birds touchscreens playing videos of whirling turbine blades painted with different color patterns to see how they reacted. One set of blades was all white, another one had red and white stripes. One had a single black blade, and another had the classic red-yellow-black pattern you see on venomous/poisonous animals like snakes and frogs.
The birds consistently avoided the color pattern that closely resembled that of the dangerous snakes and frogs they might encounter in the wild. White blades, which are the default for most wind turbines, were the worst-performing design of the bunch.
All the evolutionary cues birds are born with that keep them safe from potentially deadly animals also terrified them when painted onto a giant fan blade. At least in a laboratory setting, as they were doing their best impression of an iPad kid. The researchers were clear to point out that this probably wouldn’t eliminate bird strikes, but if future real-world tests confirm the lab results, you too might one day be frightened at the sight of a red-yellow-black wind turbine after thinking it’s the biggest coral snake you’ve ever seen.
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