Photo via Wikipedia/Black Bear
Photo via Wikipedia/Black Bear

It’s not only huge birds of prey that hate pesky drones in their habitats — a new study reveals that black bears also react poorly to the unmanned aircraft.

As reported by the CBC, drones can cause “pretty severe” stress responses in black bears, in one case elevating one mama bear’s heart rate by 400 percent.

The new report was recently published by Current Biology, which examined the “unintended consequences for wildlife” of unmanned aircraft, according to the CBC.

The researchers put GPS collars and cardiac monitors on the black bears, then flew drones about 20 meters (just over 65 feet) above them. They found that the buzzing aircraft stressed them out.

Lead author Mark Ditmer from the University of Minnesota told the CBC that they “thought the bears might flee, but they hardly moved at all.” Instead their heart rates spiked.

“It became strikingly obvious that we were seeing a pretty acute stress response that was pretty severe, at least in some cases,” Ditmer told the CBC about the experiments conducted in northern Minnesota. The most extreme case involved that aforementioned mother bear with two cubs — her heart rate increased 400 percent.

The research crew says they will continue to study drones effects on wildlife since little is known at this point. A safe bet is just don’t fly them near wildlife. Period.

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