Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2020 April 7

= April 7 =

Electroshock vs. large animals
This month's Smithsonian magazine includes an article about a group currently doing scientific research on climate and life-forms in the Arctic. At one point it shows a polar bear sniffing around their base, and says they are protected by "armed guards".

If people are at serious risk of being attacked by a bear or other large animal, I'm aware of only two methods of defense that are commonly used. One is to shoot the animal dead, and the other is to knock it out with a tranquilizer dart, then use a suitable cargo vehicle to move it far enough away. Obviously, among people who don't want to kill the animal, the second method is preferred, but it means that the cargo vehicle must be available. Hence, I suppose, the anomaly of people researching life-forms being ready to kill them.

It occurred to me to wonder if an electroshock weapon like a Taser might be a solution in these cases. Whether the bear is actually stunned or not, it would surely find the experience very unpleasant, and after that it might decide to leave on its own&mdash;rather like the idea of using bear spray. And if, instead, it just becomes more vicious, the gun would still be available. Possibly the electric weapon would need to be more powerful than the ones used against people, though, and therefore it might be more dangerous to people.

Does anyone know if this is something that has been considered or even attempted? Just curious; I'm certainly not planning to put myself into that sort of situation!

Side comment: Having had this thought while reading the article about the Arctic, I was rather amused to see that the next article in the same issue referred at one point to the response of elephants to electric fences. One elephant demolished such a fence by stomping down on it, while another one ripped up the fenceposts. But of course the fence does not deliver an incapacitating shock. --69.159.8.46 (talk) 05:35, 7 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Completely off the point, but I noticed that your phrase "the anomaly of people researching life-forms being ready to kill them" is ambiguous – who is ready to kill whom? Then it occurred to me that you could actually have written, "the anomaly of people researching life-forms being ready to kill them being ready to kill them". Still besides the point, the mention of elephants and electric fences reminded me of the gruesome death of Topsy. Not that shooting them is much better. --Lambiam 08:43, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * There's no ambiguity. "Being ready to kill them" is not a grammatical clause, as your alternate reading requires. --69.159.8.46 (talk) 02:18, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I know that the past is another country, but that sort of behaviour makes me want to impose sanctions on it. Iapetus (talk) 09:21, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * This is a youtube video on a taser designed to take down a bear or moose. --Lambiam 08:48, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I doubt a taser is going to have much effect on a bear except to make it really mad. They are notoriously unpredictable just on humans: some victims carry on as though nothing happened, other people die. Believe it or not, I once had a school holiday job testing novelty electric shock devices. One of them only gave me a slight tingle so I asked a colleague to try it, and she flew back across the room (happy days).--Shantavira|feed me 09:38, 7 April 2020 (UTC)


 * You seem to be misinterpreting what the armed guards are likely to do. The most essential job on Arctic ice: 'Polar bear guard' says that there are non-lethal techniques and that actually shooting a polar bear is very much a last resort:
 * "On both vessels, guards are trained to prevent situations that would prevent either a person or a polar bear from getting hurt. On Akademik Fedorov, for instance, the crew is equipped with rubber bullets that may deter bears without killing them. And Polarstern's guards are outfitted with flare guns designed to scare bears off before they'd ever need to resort to their rifles for protection".
 * Alansplodge (talk) 13:44, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * This is good to hear; I took "armed" to imply "with lethal weapons". --69.159.8.46 (talk) 02:18, 8 April 2020 (UTC)


 * A polar bear has a great deal more insulation around it than an elephant has; shocking it might prove tricky. Matt Deres (talk) 19:12, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Zapping it on the nose might work. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:58, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * A very small, rapidly moving target just above the part that will bite your head off about 2 seconds after you miss it, if the claws haven't disembowelled you first.
 * Typical tasers (according to easily googleable sources) have a range of 15 feet (limited to that by their wires' lengths); police-issue tasers up to 30 feet, but I doubt that they're accurate enough to reliably hit a polar bear's nose at such ranges even if it co-operated by keeping still. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.27.39 (talk) 20:21, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I didn't say it would be easy. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:32, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The following video posted on YouTube by BBC Earth and linked here doesn't directly address the taser question, but nicely illustrates the sort of situation being discussed. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.27.39 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:50, 7 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the comments. --69.159.8.46 (talk) 02:18, 8 April 2020 (UTC)