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Laser as animal repellent?






I think if you shot a dog with a paintball gun it would probably go away... I don't think it would need to be filled with anything special...

Might be a bit hard to target it on a bike while moving...
 
barbel1976 said:
lol funny as hell but so wrong


survival of the fittest
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You know the old joke..

Couple of guys out in the forest, they see a bear charging towards them, one guy yells to the other "What are we gonna do!"
second guys calmly says "I'm gonna run."
Guy responds "You can't outrun a bear!"
Second guy says "I don't need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun you!"

:eg:
 
If you went the laser route, it would be helpful to know what nanometer range a dogs eyes would be most sensitive to. Even defocused you probably would want to keep it under 20mW, this is just a guess though...
 
If you don't have anything on HAND, just RUN. If you can find an adjustable bike light in terms of brightness get one for the night and buy a rather strong but focusable laser. On DX they sell mounts to mount your stuff on your bike.

universal bike mount - DealExtreme

Pick your favorite one. And then get a laser for dazzling. And use the flashlight for night rides!
 
LORDJET said:
If you went the laser route, it would be helpful to know what nanometer range a dogs eyes would be most sensitive to. Even defocused you probably would want to keep it under 20mW, this is just a guess though...
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I'm gonna play devil's advocate here...

Use a 1W+ laser. I mean if a rabid pack of dogs is coming after me, I do not in the least care about their continued good health, I want them stopped.

IMHO it is justifiable to meet lethal intent, whether from a human being or an animal, with lethal force. Or in this case blinding light.
 
A rabid dog doesn't really have long to live anyway and it's got not any real quality of life left anyway...
 
InfinitusEquitas said:
I'm gonna play devil's advocate here...

Use a 1W+ laser. I mean if a rabid pack of dogs is coming after me, I do not in the least care about their continued good health, I want them stopped.

IMHO it is justifiable to meet lethal intent, whether from a human being or an animal, with lethal force. Or in this case blinding light.
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^^^ Valid point!;)
 
Thanks all for the comments! On the lethal intent - lethal force thing, we were concerned about the ethics of blinding the animals but not killing them and wondering whether that would be worse - as Guyfromhe says, they're not exactly healthy in the first place but is it right to cripple them?

We discussed paintball guns; as someone on the previous page pointed out, they're not easy to aim from a moving bike but an automatic-reloading one (sorry, you can tell how much I know about guns...!) would at least mean we could get more than one shot in.

We cycle almost exclusively during the day time so bright lights would have to be REALLY bright - one of the rides is across the Great Rift Valley in Kenya, so we cross the equator during the middle of the day: it's pretty hard to beat natural sunlight, although it has just occurred to me that in those conditions we could just use a simple mirror! Obviously not a universal solution but one we hadn't actually thought of...

I think I'm going to try a 5-20mW 532nm pointer, strobing and de-focussed. If it doesn't work, at least I can re-focus it and I'll have a new toy! Although I'm not sure I want to get seriously into laser pointers, you guys have some scary devices on here and I have enough expensive hobbies already!

...which, of course, brings me on to a really n00bish question, sorry - where do I buy one? Will I have to build my own, if I want its first switch-on function to be a fast strobe? Sorry, I know I should really go and hunt through all the technical data for this, but if anyone has any tips I'd appreciate them.

Thank you all for your time!

P.S. we also discussed pepper spray / bear spray / mace / CS but the main problem with them, and moving bicycles, is wind: if it got blown back at me or the cyclists behind me, we'd end up presenting a much more appealing target to the dogs as we fall off our bikes and writhe around in eye-watering pain!
 
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inch said:
Thanks all for the comments! On the lethal intent - lethal force thing, we were concerned about the ethics of blinding the animals but not killing them and wondering whether that would be worse - as Guyfromhe says, they're not exactly healthy in the first place but is it right to cripple them?
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A crippled rabid dog would die faster... so as ethics go, you would be doing a service to both the animal and society. Of course not a very humane service, but still a service.

inch said:
We discussed paintball guns; as someone on the previous page pointed out, they're not easy to aim from a moving bike but an automatic-reloading one (sorry, you can tell how much I know about guns...!) would at least mean we could get more than one shot in.
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Maybe contact this guy, would work better than a paintball gun: Electric Automatic Cross Bow - YouTube :eg:

inch said:
I think I'm going to try a 5-20mW 532nm pointer, strobing and de-focussed. If it doesn't work, at least I can re-focus it and I'll have a new toy! Although I'm not sure I want to get seriously into laser pointers, you guys have some scary devices on here and I have enough expensive hobbies already!

...which, of course, brings me on to a really n00bish question, sorry - where do I buy one? Will I have to build my own, if I want its first switch-on function to be a fast strobe? Sorry, I know I should really go and hunt through all the technical data for this, but if anyone has any tips I'd appreciate them.
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There are a ton of lasers you can try out, except that 99% of those are not pulsed. Honestly I doubt a 20mW laser would do anything but piss off a a rabid dog. My own dog doesn't react to lasers at all. Maybe he's just seen too many:o

If you want to try out something cheap but decent: lazerer.com, o-like.com, rayfoss.com.
 
dog mace seems to work great with me, i have had to use it 2 times, i tried my laser with a raccoon one time but it just scared it cause of the brightness, but i have not had any luck with dogs
 
OK, after a bit more research I'm wondering about wavelengths. According to Wikipedia's page on colour vision, humans are trichromats, meaning they have three different types of colour-sensitive cells in the eye. The human eye is most sensitive to green around 532nm, which is why it looks brightest. (third graph down on that page).

However, most mammals are dichromats, meaning they only have two different types of colour-sensitive cells in their eyes, and many are red-green colour blind. I'm trying to find out which colours appear brightest for dogs. I've found out lots of interesting stuff about how white-tailed deer see short wavelengths much better than we do, so washing your hunting kit in normal washing powder may make you appear to a deer like a glowing beacon!...

seeingdeer.jpg


It seems that dog vision, like most mammals, is mainly in the blue and yellowish areas. This article was very useful:

Eyes / Sport Dog Training

...so I guess I'm thinking about building or buying a 445nm laser, with adjustable optical focus (or possibly a filter to spread dots over a slightly wider area - likely to be more effective than trying to target a tighter strobing beam) and maybe adjustable power, although I'm not sure how high I'll go up to. It'll need to be compact but fairly rugged, although I'm not concerned about hours of battery life.

So my next step will be some more detailed research along those lines! Just ordered a pair of Eagle Pairs, I'm very concerned that I could do myself some damage while trying to limit the damage I could do with my laser!
 
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