Look Who it Was Random video

CSULB Robot Coyote

924 views · Published 18 July 2016 · 3:43 · Indexed 23 October 2026

Channel: Beach TV CSULB · 2016 · Education

Watch on YouTube

Well, Southern California is not just home to millions of people but also plenty of wildlife. And a team at Cal State Long Beach is studying predators, like coyotes, and how they move through urban areas. Yesterday, you saw Eye Witness News Reporter Rob Hayes on a nighttime mission with a robot coyote and it is all part of a study to learn how to teach coyotes to leave domestic animals alone. But Cal State Long Beach Biologist Dr. Ted Stankowich, he is joining us today, to kind of talk to us about this.

Yeah, and he's here to talk more about his study of skunks and coyotes and how all of that is related to our pets. So bottom line, tell us what your research is all about.

So we aim to understand how do predators and prey interact in the wild and how can we take that knowledge of those behavioral interactions and use it to ease the conflict between coyotes and humans and pets that we have in Los Angeles.

You're - and I know you're studying skunks and particularly, you're studying skunks and it's hard to imagine skunks may play a role with coyotes but if you can tell us about that correlation, as well as explain what you - we like to call it the coyote robot and you've kind of fondly named it something else.

Right. So we're interested in how do skunks assess risk in their environment, how do they respond to predators. Skunks don't want to spray you. They have a variety of behaviors that they can use to deter predators when they attack. And so we're trying to understand how these animals behave towards predators and how we can use their responses, their behaviors and their sprays to deter a coyote from maybe attacking a pet using a remote control model in the future. So we use this coyote robot now to study the skunk responses. So we take it out and we can approach skunks in the wild and see how they respond and adjust the coyote's behavior to see how those things interact with each other.

And now we're seeing the robot coyote. We apologize for some of the feedback you may be hearing at home with the audio. I think that's the remote control and the mic interacting with each other. Maybe some of it's getting better. So there it is. What's the name of that thing?

So we lovingly call it Obi-Wan Coyote.

Love it. So how does it work?

So it's a remote controlled robot, turns 360 degrees and it has a thermal camera, an infrared camera and a full spectrum GoPro on top. It is - operates fully in the dark with infrared lights and we can drive it around and approach skunks from a long distance away. The coyote on it is actually a rubberized, very cheap model on top because, you know, if we get sprayed by a skunk, we don't want to have a nice, expensive, furry skin on top. So in the dark, they don't really know the difference and this works quite well to harass them.

So what is some of the most surprising things that you're learning because some of it involves when skunks spray and when they don't.

Right, so it's surprising how uncommon it is for skunks to actually spray these predators. They will try their best to deter a predator from attacking before they actually just have to spray. So this model has shown us just how far we can push it before they have to actually spray.

And for us, we know to back away. They won't spray us.

Back away and no spray. All right, so can you attack our photographer with that thing?

Oh no.

Got to get the Sean Patrick Lewis making his cameo getting attacked by a coyote robot. All right. Well, that was fun. Thank you very much for the good research and hopefully it helps keep all of our pets safe. We appreciate you coming in.

Thank you.

You can see more on Dr. Stankowich's work online. Just go to ABC7.com for a link to Rob Hayes' pieces. We'll have more information about it. Thank you so much.

More from this channel