Hello! We are a group of students at UC Berkeley working to design a lion deterrence system that is more affordable and cost-effective for community livestock protection and human-wildlife coexistence in rural Zimbabwe. The main solutions we are considering are the use of artificial eye spots to trick lions and solar-powered LED lights. We are hoping to connect with anyone in this field who can give us any advice or suggestions.

Herdhanu Jayanto

@hjayanto | He/Him

KONKLUSI (Kolaborasi Inklusi Konservasi - Yayasan)

Your friendly Indo-Crocky-Croc

1 March 2024 1:22am

maybe not very helpful and techy stuff, but indeed interesting to prevent livestock predation if you haven't seen one

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/painting-eyes-cow-butts-could-save-cow-and-lion-lives-180975601/

Kim Lane

1 March 2024 1:22am

I remember the study in EA when they painted cows with zebra strips to stop the Tsetse fly bites. Sometimes it is the simplest things that work

Cows painted with zebra-like striping can avoid biting fly attack | PLOS One

Experimental and comparative studies suggest that the striped coats of zebras can prevent biting fly attacks. Biting flies are serious pests of livestock that cause economic losses in animal production. We hypothesized that cows painted with black and white stripes on their body could avoid biting fly attacks and show fewer fly-repelling behaviors. Six Japanese Black cows were assigned to treatments using a 3 × 3 Latin-square design. The treatments were black-and-white painted stripes, black painted stripes, and no stripes (all-black body surface). Recorded fly-repelling behaviors were head throw, ear beat, leg stamp, skin twitch, and tail flick. Photo images of the right side of each cow were taken using a commercial digital camera after every observation and biting flies on the body and each leg were counted from the photo images. Here we show that the numbers of biting flies on Japanese Black cows painted with black-and-white stripes were significantly lower than those on non-painted cows and cows painted only with black stripes. The frequencies of fly-repelling behaviors in cows painted with black-and-white stripes were also lower than those in the non-painted and black-striped cows. These results thus suggest that painting black-and-white stripes on livestock such as cattle can prevent biting fly attacks and provide an alternative method of defending livestock against biting flies without using pesticides in animal production, thereby proposing a solution for the problem of pesticide resistance in the environment.

Brett Muir

@BrettMargoSupplies

R & D Tech | Industrial Designer | Wildlife Management Technology

1 March 2024 3:46pm

Hi Rokshana,

I haven't dealt with lions specifically but we have solutions that work for mountain lions and bears.

One example:

https://youtu.be/ynynSmnHvS8?si=3D4g7hu6LifO_iQh

Some others are pyrotechnics or powderballs for active deterants.

We have also had people use our Squawk box to play random human noises.

Happy to answer any questions.

Rob Appleby

@Rob_Appleby | He/him

Wild Spy

Whilst I love everything about WILDLABS and the conservation tech community I am mostly here for the badges!!

8 March 2024 2:52pm

Hi @rokshanabushra

So are you looking to replicate something like this?

https://predatorguard.com/products/predator-deterrent-light

This is, in principle at least, fairly simple, as it's really just some red LEDs and a small solar-battery power system. You could buy one of the commercial options and do a teardown (or I can do it if you like, as I'd be interested to find out exactly what they are doing).

In lieu of that, I suspect a light-dependent resistor is probably used to control the lights coming on at night (i.e. something along these lines: https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Make-LDR-Darkness-Sensor-Circuit-Simple-DIY/).

If you employ some sort of 'blink' or flashing protocol (you could use a 555 timer to keep the costs down), you could save quite a bit of power (compared to running the lights constantly). For example, something along these lines: https://www.instructables.com/Adjustable-SingleDual-LED-Flasher-Using-555-Timer-/ You could also add a PIR motion sensor so it only comes on when nearby motion is detected, but of course the costs of building goes up.

There are also a few off-the-shelf flasher designs that might be cheap enough already to consider (e.g. https://www.ledsales.com.au/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=142_143&products_id=2820). This seems like a reasonably good option for low power, although I have no idea how well it actually works...You can also buy LEDs that flash by themselves (e.g. https://www.ledsales.com.au/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=148_152_159&products_id=2951).

If you think sounds might also help (e.g. human noises etc.), check out the Boombox from Freaklabs: https://freaklabs.org/technology/boombox/ and it should be possible to add 'eyes' in the form of reflectors, or, some kind of LEDs that activate at the same time as the sound. You could contact Akiba or Jacinta about it as I am sure they'd help if they can: https://freaklabs.org/about/#:~:text=providers%20including%20ARGOS.-,the%20team,-Chris%20%E2%80%98Akiba%E2%80%99%20Wang

Anyway, happy to help if I can and all the best for the project.

Cheers,

Rob

Priyank Shah

@Priyank14

A Wildlife Biologist interested in Environment Assessment and Restoration, In-situ and Ex-situ strategies, Technologies used in Conservation and Illegal Wildlife Trade.

8 March 2024 4:11pm

Hi Rokshana,

Maybe you can try this product from India called ANIDERS -

I think this product would help you a lot. This is their website -

ANIDERS - Animal Intrusion Detection and Repellent System | Kyari for Wildlife

Searching for an animal repellent solution? We at Kyari have come up with a mechanised scarecrow that can prevent crop raiding and increase crop yield. It is effective on Elephants, Wild Boar, Blue Bull (Nilgai) and Deer.

Kyari - Nursery of Innovations • 06 Oct 2016