Got to Hate Rats!!!!!!

hi All, how are you going?  this is my first post here, usually i am in the other threads.  Has anyone here had any rodent issues with their machines?  A few days ago, i discovered that a rat had got into the cable channel of my turning centre and ate my optic fibre cables leading to a 5136 alarm!  Good thing for Jaycar (like radio shack) as i was able to buy 2 x toslink cables and make them fit.  You have to love a $60 fix to a $250k + machine!

thanks.  ben

I miss my Rats !!!

I don't care for rats...

There is a province in Canada that has completely eliminated them. In the US we probably have more rats than people, not counting the ones that could be either or.

JR

John, here's something we can agree on:
The (conservative, strangely enough) German government, pressured by environmental groups, animal lovers etc. has just issued a regulation that made it illegal to sell the most common and most usefull rat poision to anyone but certified professional exterminators. And even their lobby has made public that they consider it a very bad idea indeed, as they won't be able to cope with the problem sufficiently on their own, and that we're now in for widespreat rat infestations.

I think this is nuts, and the sooner we get rid of every single one of those rodents in cities (minus pets and laboratory animials) the better.

If only robotics were advanced enough to allow for automated pest-control machines patrolling sevages... ;-)

It seems like a nice student project for gymnasium. Make little laser zappers with pattern recognition to ID the specific rodents, automatic targeting to lead their movement, etc.  But it seems a laser weapon doesn't need much windage. 

I never could figure out why the robot soldier in bad science fiction always missed? It seems they would be more accurate than the humans who always won the shoot outs.

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I am opposed to poison, since if you poison the rats they crawl up somewhere comfortable to die, and stink up the place. They make rat-sized old school mouse traps that do the job, and you can find the corpus delecti. You need to be careful setting them since they will more than sting a little, and they will also take out other small varmints... I have one set in my tool room and got one chipmunk or something like that,,, he couldn't tell me what he "was" exactly, but he wasn't paying rent so he had to go..

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IIRC the poison commonly used on rats was wafarin, a blood thinner, that makes the bleed to death from internal bleeding.

What's the worst that could happen, a few rats with fleas and a bacterium...?

JR

Traps work if you're in a fundamentally clean and sealed off area with a single (or maybe a few) rodent(s). But a full rat population in more ragged surroundings require the anticoagulant delayed-action method (there are several different ones availible), so as not to warn the other ones. A dead rat will compell the others to leave and not touch anything around it.

The humans win because of what Terry Pratchett calls "narrative causality". ;-)

Pattern-recognition technology coupled with a 3D camera should be sufficiently advanced already. Still, both bullets and lasers seem to be too dangerous to be used in places with people around. But small robots with high voltage shock devices might work. ;-)

I have used traps very effectively to clear out a mouse infestation, when I moved into a work area, where the former occupants left food laying around. While the paid exterminators are all too happy to use bait and poison, because they get a second call back to remove the dead corpses.
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I bought an electronic  mouse/rat zapper, partially for the novelty and in part because a friend who bought one said it works. So far it has only caught a few spiders.

That province in Canada that eradicated rats from their geographic region is a case study in how to do it, and how to keep them out. Apparently it requires constant monitoring to keep them from reestablishing a population. 

Maybe this is something that could keep the government busy and out of our hair.  ;D

JR

Then there's also acoustic rat control techniques.

A guy called Piper pioneered it.  Last seen around the town of Hamelin, I believe.

Very effective as long as the payment is kept up

Yup, we always must "pay the piper his due..."

Perhaps they could isolate a rat sex pheromone to take the place of the magic flute and attract the male rats to follow them off a cliff.

I want to see the robot that is quick and agile enough to chase rats over rough urban (or not) terrain and catch them, so it can zap them.

What is the worst thing that could happen with a bunch of laser weapon armed robots?  8)

JR

JohnRoberts said:

I want to see the robot that is quick and agile enough to chase rats over rough urban (or not) terrain and catch them, so it can zap them.

Click to expand...

What about insect-sized mini-robo-drones loaded with a little poison and an IV needle? Military research in this direction is already going on.

living sounds said:

JohnRoberts said:

I want to see the robot that is quick and agile enough to chase rats over rough urban (or not) terrain and catch them, so it can zap them.

Click to expand...

What about insect-sized mini-robo-drones loaded with a little poison and an IV needle? Military research in this direction is already going on.

Click to expand...

I guess flying would help with the terrain, but payload is still an issue, unless they use something extremely lethal (like plutonium) for the poison.  Again, what's the worst thing that could happen like if somebody has a picture of a rat on their t-shirt?
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I am not a huge fan of the recent expanded use of military drones. This precision bombing makes water boarding look absolutely friendly, and has concealed or downplayed the expansion of fighting into other countries.  The use of professional military instead of the draft (I was drafted in 1970), gives the public a degree of separation from the savagery and sacrifice of ballistic warfare and killing. The use of remote control drones to do the killing, adds yet another layer of separation between the public and the dirty business at hand. This should never be easy or painless.

Not that I have a good solution for the worlds problems, but everything has consequences and unintended effects.  Micro-drones seem like assassination tools, while maybe that will spare the rest of the family that are being taken out now by full sized drone attacks.

JR

JohnRoberts said:

I guess flying would help with the terrain, but payload is still an issue, unless they use something extremely lethal (like plutonium) for the poison.  Again, what's the worst thing that could happen like if somebody has a picture of a rat on their t-shirt?
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I am not a huge fan of the recent expanded use of military drones. This precision bombing makes water boarding look absolutely friendly, and has concealed or downplayed the expansion of fighting into other countries.  The use of professional military instead of the draft (I was drafted in 1970), gives the public a degree of separation from the savagery and sacrifice of ballistic warfare and killing. The use of remote control drones to do the killing, adds yet another layer of separation between the public and the dirty business at hand. This should never be easy or painless.

Not that I have a good solution for the worlds problems, but everything has consequences and unintended effects.  Micro-drones seem like assassination tools, while maybe that will spare the rest of the family that are being taken out now by full sized drone attacks.

JR

Click to expand...

Agreed, and there has been a de-facto expansion of presidential powers in this regard that is problematic.

There are substances of much higher toxicity than plutonium (Botox for example) for which payload would be a non-issue, but they need to decay quickly after the injection so as not to pollute the surroundings.

But the idea of robotic minibugs that can get practically anywhere is just one of the things that makes me wonder where technological advancements will get us, some of this is pretty scary, at least potentially.

Executive power has long been tested by almost every president. It is the responsibility of the other power centers in government to restrain the executive, and failing that its up to the people (like with elections). The problem with expansions of executive power is they rarely get rolled back, so over time it builds on past precedents, to the point that the old exceptions become the new routine. I fear the awareness of this is both extremely low, and in many cases considered a positive by the politically connected or desirable sectors of the populations that benefit from this executive overreach.

Executive appointments during recesses to avoid congressional scrutiny are just another example, but the congress is not pure. They have prostituted the law making process beyond recognition.  I think lawmakers need to be tested on legislation that they vote on, to prove that they actually read and more importantly understand it. If they don't vote on a significant majority of legislation they are automatically removed from office and replaced. The whole, set up some new regulatory body, but fill in the regulations later, is just ripe for partisan abuse. While the legislators will whine that is too hard and so much work that it would be hard to pass a lot of new bills. That is exactly my point.

etc etc etc...
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just look at good science fiction for more future technology to be afraid about (if you don't already have enough).

DNA mapping is another doubled edged sword opening up new medical treatment pathways and new ways to target individuals or families (tribes) with bad intent.

But this is not new, and perhaps why there remains a strain of ludditism in some political factions, while others blindly embrace all technology as an almost magical solution for more concrete problems (like spending more money than we have). 

It is remarkable what technology has given us, so surely it is more good than bad, but nothing is ever one sided (some have more than two sides).

JR

One of the more interesting concepts IMO are self-replicating machines, small artificial lifeforms that can and do utilize all kinds of matter to make more copies of themselves, access several sources of energy, communicate and network to greatly enhance their power -  and - once unleashed - eventually devour everything. Biological 'blind' evolution is very powerfull, but hypercharged (semi)-guided technological evolution - probably unstopable. Rats are much easier to deal with. ;-)

Rodents ate the wiring on my Nissan van a few winters back... to the tune of about $2700 to fix.  Luckily, insurance covered most of it.

What seems stupid is making wiring insulation from soy products (as was the case here.)  Might as well just have peanut butter flavored wiring?

There is a product called Rataway that claims to keep rodents from eating stuff, but I can't say if it works.  I bought a little bottle, but never got around to crawling under and applying it.  Then I traded it in.

Tod

living sounds said:

One of the more interesting concepts IMO are self-replicating machines, small artificial lifeforms that can and do utilize all kinds of matter to make more copies of themselves, access several sources of energy, communicate and network to greatly enhance their power -  and - once unleashed - eventually devour everything. Biological 'blind' evolution is very powerfull, but hypercharged (semi)-guided technological evolution - probably unstopable. Rats are much easier to deal with. ;-)

Click to expand...

Thats why Assimov wrote the rules...  8)

I don't want machines to reproduce themselves, but maybe they could make their own repair parts..  ;D

JR

JohnRoberts said:

I don't want machines to reproduce themselves, but maybe they could make their own repair parts..  ;D

JR

Click to expand...

They might be very usefull, though, I wouldn't mind self-replicating nanobots in my body repairing age- and injury-related damage for instance. 

living sounds said:

JohnRoberts said:

I want to see the robot that is quick and agile enough to chase rats over rough urban (or not) terrain and catch them, so it can zap them.

Click to expand...

What about insect-sized mini-robo-drones loaded with a little poison and an IV needle? Military research in this direction is already going on.

Click to expand...

Just that nature has a several million year head start. The Rat is highly adaptable to most earth environments, which to me proves it's a perfect design. Those engineers need to invent some pretty emergent things to replicate even the most basic motor functions needed to outrun a rat - let alone survive in the harsh environments where they would be working. I've a feeling genetic engineering will catch up to this task first and produce ways to control rat populations in more civilized ways. Most likely as a side product from human medical research - indeed from trying to make us live longer.

nanobots inside to perform literal repairs on our body may have some merit in bone breaks, or heart disease (think roto-rooter), but to manage simple aging decline requires a far better understanding of the process, and we aren't even close (yet).  A nice dream, but then what do we do with all the F'n people if they stop dying off? It's bad enough now just squaring up the curve and reducing deaths from common disease.

JR

PS: another interesting technology is a variation on 3D printers that lay down layers of cells and can literally print a new body part, while I suspect there are a few loose ends to tie up with this technology too.

JohnRoberts said:

nanobots inside to perform literal repairs on our body may have some merit in bone breaks, or heart disease (think roto-rooter), but to manage simple aging decline requires a far better understanding of the process, and we aren't even close (yet).  A nice dream, but then what do we do with all the F'n people if they stop dying off? It's bad enough now just squaring up the curve and reducing deaths from common disease.

Click to expand...

I wasn't suggesting this was right around the corner. Just that I wouldn't mind.  ;D