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> How come there isn’t a predator collar that releases pepper spray when wolves go in for the throat kill?

The wolf collar was invented for this and dates back to Ancient Greece:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_collar

Typically it was/is fitted to guard dogs who would then fight the wolves.

Wow. That’s a history I didn’t know about. Thank you.

Edit: I wonder if it would be more cost effective to put collars on the few hundred wolves we are talking about and near some kind of near field rfid style trigger on protected species. We could just trigger them on USDA tags maybe? Anyone tried this?

Wolf collars imply throat kills which is my understanding of how wolves kill and we already use 15 digit USDA approved ear tags on most animals.

I mean this is a social conditioning program so it could make sense as you wouldn’t have to keep it up forever or completely just enough to change pack behaviors perhaps. It’s the same model skunks use and they’re fairly effective at deterring predators.

You could also cost effectively rfid chip the wolves one time and put lower cost proximity deterrence on prey animals inside the range. This isn’t expensive stuff to implement and many of these animals are already being tagged or monitored by programs.

A blacklist for wolve rfid seems very doable. We could figure out problem wolves that actually need to be removed if we had active data instead of blanket population thinning. That’d probably go a long way towards increasing popular support for ranchers too.

Found a study that shows double digit reduction of predation levels with just a hard collar:

https://www.conservationevidence.com/actions/2448

Also found a government program already doing this for coyote:

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-A101-PURL-LPS9980...

So it seems like adding reactivity to this idea could really work.

And here’s another farmer having great success:

https://www.farmersweekly.co.za/animals/sheep-and-goats/karo...

Why I aren’t we having a larger conversation here around this wolf reintroduction?

>How come there isn’t a predator collar that releases pepper spray when wolves go in for the throat kill? Seems like we should be able to make livestock unattractive targets with some kind of technology like this and do some reinforcement learning to prevent this conflict.

Beyond the initial challenges of figuring out how a collar can precisely and accurately predict when an animal is about to begin a specific type of attack and then react before enough damage can be done, you've also then got to be able to refill the pepper spray throughout the animal's life, ensure that each and every animal born into each and every pack gets a collar, etc.

Just seems wildly unviable.

Edit: There's also the nuance around the fact that the wolf has to eat at some point, and usually this will involve killing another wild animal. The collar would have to be able to accurately differentiate between "allowed to kill" and "not allowed to kill", which seems... difficult. I'm not sure that a simple bit of geofencing or whathaveyou would be good enough in these situations.

Does it? Wouldn’t it just need to be economically viable and isn’t that something that could be calculated? Aren’t the losses significant enough to pay for a fairly large program? If not, why is this a concern to ranchers? And wouldn’t most of the collars not be used and be more like insurance which we already have and use on most herds?

Your summary dismissal without consideration and downvote don’t follow common sense. And let me tell you a lot of the biggest market opportunities are found inside of places people tell you you’re an idiot for even exploring. Be mindful. Stripe and Gusto and oceans of others were solved problems.

If it’s a big enough problem to support an insurance industry surely $10 worth of pepper spray and a $50 reusable collar would be in budget.

Edit: regarding your edit, this has already been demonstrated in janguars.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016815912...

Also a meta study:

https://environmentalevidencejournal.biomedcentral.com/artic...

This study has a killer quote:

“Everyone knew there were wolves in the mountains… but they seldom came near the village - the modern wolves were the offspring of ancestors that had survived because they had learned that human meat had sharp edges.”

Please consider being less hasty to dismiss unconventional thinking. Let’s keep HN weird thinking friend?

You're talking about an industry that's unwilling to spend $10 to vaccinate herd animals.

> Please consider being less hasty to dismiss unconventional thinking. Let’s keep HN weird thinking friend?

Friend you're approaching a problem you know nothing about and complaining about being dismissed... by someone who took the time to explain why your tenuously informed idea will never work.

Disappointing response. Don’t make generalizations or confuse explorative questions for broad naïveté.

The issue I take with your approach here is that you’re focused on making the other person feel wrong, on the wrong path and assuming they know nothing (implied: idiot) rather than exploring ideas and solutions to novel problems.

That’s a common pattern in the world (ad hominem), but it doesn’t do much in innovation circles or have much of a place in early stage innovation practice.

I have a fair amount of experience in ag, and ag insurance, but not predator collars.

I’m cool with being downvoted for having an unpopular idea but please be more conscious: not everyone would speak up to your behavior and it’s quite unnecessary. Try to attack what’s wrong with the idea not the person.

You are literally on here telling me that my ideas will never work. It’s a lot cliché and not just a little bit hilarious. Don’t do it. Haha.*

I’m ok being dumb when exploring ideas, and that’s actually ok. Or it should be. At least on HN.

Your comment looks a lot like a common trope on this site: people encountering a problem they know little about, thinking for 20 seconds, and saying “You could just…”

And that’s annoying because it’s arrogant and it invalidates people who have dedicated their lives and careers to that work.

But rereading your initial comment, I think it was actually framed as invitation for discussion rather than an “obvious simple solution”.

Don’t let it worry you too much. Sometimes shit just gets downvoted!

Thanks for this.

I am not always full of grace and poise when exploring stuff, as I find it counterproductive to real exploration. People love to just rip you down when you ask why: it’s got to be fundamental to something in human evolution. Nothing pisses some people off than questioning the status quo.

But I’d much rather put one a flame retarding suite and ask basic first-principle style questions and get assumed to be an idiot but actually learn something than try to look smart. Probably because I’m not smart.

I’d also assume that a lot of what’s been done already is smart, but often the incentives aren’t aligned to put something into implementation or regulation keeps smart solutions from progressing to viability. There’s something in almost every market that’s not moving forward just due to poor regulation or mis or under considered incentive misalignment.

I’ve done a lot of work in ag and know something about the insurance side but not much on predator mitigation, but it seems like an area where we could really improve. I don’t believe every innovation worth making in the space is already done so we should keep exploring.

Thanks for understanding the spirit of it.

> ensure that each and every animal born into each and every pack gets a collar, etc.

The collar goes onto the livestock, not the wild animal.

D'oh! I don't know how that didn't occur to me. Thank you for pointing that out.

Edit: Totes happy with my previous comment being downvoted, because it's clearly a bad take in hindsight, but this one? The one where I kindly go, "Oh shit, duh, how stupid of me"? Seriously? Y'all do you, lol...

> make livestock unattractive targets with some kind of technology

There is also a much older technology called guard dogs

These problems will be solved with AGI because it will be able to talk to animals and convince them to stop being predators.