In Japan, as bears come down to residential areas and cause casualties, demand is surging for wolf-inspired wild animal repellent robots.
According to the Yomiuri Shimbun on the 12th (local time), orders have recently spiked for the wild animal repellent robot Monster Wolf from Ota Seiki, a machine parts processing company in Naie, Hokkaido, prompting the company to speed up production.
Shaped like a wolf, Monster Wolf detects animals with an infrared sensor and emits construction site-level, high-volume warning sounds and strong light using light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to intimidate wildlife. It was originally developed to respond to crop damage caused by other wild animals such as deer, but demand is believed to have surged recently as bear sightings have increased.
Ota Seiki said orders this year are more than three times the normal year, and there is currently a two- to three-month wait for installation. President Ota Yuji said, "Until now, the main users were farms, but recently that has expanded to construction sites and golf courses," adding, "It shows that bears are coming down into areas where people live."
In fact, cases of bears emerging in residential areas are increasing in Japan as they wake from hibernation. According to major foreign media, there were 238 bear attack cases in Japan from April last year over the course of a year, the most on record, and 13 people died among them.
Most bear attacks occurred in six prefectures in the Tohoku region of northeastern Japan. In Aomori Prefecture last month, a woman's body was found, and just before that in a nearby area, a police officer was injured in a bear attack.
Aomori Prefecture issued a special alert after five Asian black bears were spotted over 10 days in April, and Iwate and Fukushima prefectures issued alerts at similar levels. In Fukushima Prefecture, a bear weighing more than 100 kilograms appeared in a residential neighborhood and was shot dead after a long standoff with police.
Japan's environmental authorities and experts believe bears came down to residential areas last year in search of food due to a poor mast crop, including beech nuts. Recently, some analyses say more bears are becoming accustomed to finding food in human residential areas.
Koite Shinsuke, a professor at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, told the Mainichi Shimbun, "Bears that came down to human residential areas in the past may have learned that food can be found close to people." He also said, "Because some bears safely returned to their habitats even after contact with people in the past, they may no longer regard humans as a threatening presence."