Florida is rolling out a new program to help combat the rise of invasive pythons in the state.
The strange part, though? It’ll be based around robotic rabbits.
That’s according to Mike Kirkland, the lead invasive animal biologist for the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD).
Kirkland spoke with News 6 on Wednesday to discuss the program — dubbed the “Lures Project” — which seeks to lure pythons out from their hiding places and gather them in areas where they’ll be easier to remove.
“For the python issue, detection is our biggest challenge, so the first phase of the project involved using live rabbits in the field,” he explained. “These were rabbits kept in pens... and they had food, shelter, water, toys for enrichment, even kept under strict animal husbandry standards.”
Per Kirkland, these rabbits were indeed able to lure pythons, which ventured from their hidey holes to check the rodents out.
However, keeping live rabbits out in the field this way cost a lot of time and resources — hence the decision to replace these furry critters with their mechanical doppelgangers.
“These are just toy rabbits that were purchased on Amazon, I think, and they already have some movement to them,” Kirkland said. “They’ve been retrofitted with a heating source, and we give them some extra movement.”
[BELOW: Watch footage of a robotic rabbit below along with its heat signature, courtesy of the SFWMD]
In addition, Kirkland said the tools will soon be equipped with diffusers to regularly emit “rabbit smells” as a way to better lure out the snakes.
However, just because they’re not alive doesn’t mean these decoys aren’t being taken care of. Kirkland told News 6 that the automatons will be placed in field enclosures just like the real rabbits.
“But what’s around these enclosures are cameras, and these cameras are guided by an AI detection system that we’re also in the process of training,” he said. “And the idea is that the AI camera will be able to detect whether it’s a python or not, versus one of our many native snake species here in South Florida.”
From there, Kirkland added, the detection system will alert someone so that a contractor can come out and remove the python.
He also said that during the phase with the live rabbits, there were around 26 different pythons detected in a three-month period, a statistically significant number.
And the team is expecting similar — if not better — results with this program.
For more information on Florida’s Python Elimination Program, click here.