Goss’s team has put GPS tracking collars on 15 elephants throughout the reserve and can follow them online via Google Earth. If the animals stray into areas frequented by poachers—or nearby grazing land for cows that belong to the semi-nomadic Maasai tribe—Goss sends in one or more of his three drones. In his flatbed truck, he touches a button on his iPad 3 display labeled “take off,” and the $300 Parrot AR.Drone takes flight. About 2.5 feet long and 1 foot wide, the unarmed spycraft has four rotors that can carry it high above the savanna. It can spot poachers and divert elephants, which are typically frightened by the quadcopter’s buzzing rotors. “We realized very quickly that the elephants hated the sound of them,” says Goss, 28. “I’m assuming that they think it’s a swarm of bees.”
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