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Robots

Viral Video Offers Compelling New Strategy for Defending Kids From 30-50 Feral Hogs: Bipedal Robots

But is this a legit answer to the legit question Americans have been chewing on since 2019?
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In early August 2019, Twitter hyperfixated on a seemingly odd hypothetical scenario that spun out of a broader debate about civilian access to assault rifles. After musician Jason Isbell deemed anyone even delving into the semantics of what technically is or isn’t an assault rifle as “part of the problem,” user @WillieMcNabb replied with the earnest follow-up that would soon set the discourse ablaze.

“Legit question for rural Americans,” wrote WillieMcNabb. “How do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?”

Within minutes, the colorful scenario had been shared far and wide, and Twitter’s most online denizens were dogpiling (hogpiling?) the tweet, getting their dunks in. Despite the initial jocularity surrounding the @WillieMcNabb’s query, subsequent investigation into the matter revealed it to be far from the ludicrous reaching of some 2nd-Amendment-caping hayseed, as originally portrayed by detractors. As the forthcoming exculpatory articles, posts, and podcasts soon made clear, the tweet had a point—feral hogs are one of the most destructive invasive species on the planet, causing over $1.5 billion in property damage across the U.S. each year. And those territorial bastards have been known to attack—and even kill, on rare occasion—humans they perceive as a threat.

While @WillieMcNabb may have received a fair amount of mea culpas in the years since that initial tweet, they (and we) never actually got an answer to the question at the crux of the matter— outside of weapons of war, how could one deal with this pernicious porcine problem?

A recent video coming to us from Warsaw, Poland, awakens that conundrum out of stasis and presents us with a thoroughly modern solution: robots.

The clip in question features a pack of wild hogs scampering off into the horizon with a Unitree G1 humanoid robot, recently seen fighting children in China, awkwardly clomping along behind the boars. Having chased the unwelcome swine away, our cybernetic sheepdog hero closes out the video by stopping to stare down his fleeing quarry and raise a cold, clenched fist, as if to say “go on, now, git!”

“I’m herding the wild boars into the forest,” claimed the original caption for this clip, presented in the voice of its bot protagonist, who goes by the name of Edward Warchocki.

Though it may be your and the hogs’ first encounter with Edward, this creaky little clanker has been making quite the splash in Poland. As a bona fide robo-influencer, this cheerful Chappie has undertaken every endeavor from parliamentary field trips to grocery store errands, and now he and his creators seem to be trying their hands at animal control.

Underwhelmed by their hog-herding efforts? With Unitree’s G1 model starting at only $13,500 (plus up to $1,200 in shipping), anyone with a modicum of means can take a stab at culling the droves, sci-fi style. But with a battery life of only two hours, you’d better make sure your little Terminator is going into the fray with a plan.

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