VIDEO: Richmond Officer Shot in Foot Pursuit, Suspect in Custody

No matter how many regulations are put in place, drones are cheap enough now that frequent misuse is becoming the norm. There’s no good way of dealing with a dangerous drone: you can jam its radios to force it to autoland, or maybe  try using an even bigger drone to capture it inside a giant net like police are planning to do in Japam. In either of these cases, however, you run the risk of having the drone go completely out of control, which is even more dangerous.

Or, you can be like the Dutch National Police, and train eagles to take down drones for you.

The Dutch police have partnered with Guard From Above, a raptor training company based in The Hague, to determine whether eagles could be used as intelligent, adaptive anti-drone weapon systems. The eagles are specially trained to identify and capture drones, although from the way most birds of prey react to drones, my guess is that not a lot of training was necessary. After snatching the drone out of the sky, the eagles instinctively find a safe area away from people to land and try take a couple confused bites out of their mechanical prey before their handlers can reward them with something a little less plastic-y.

According to the Dutch Police, these tests should last a few months, at which point they’ll decide whether using the eagles in this way is an effective and appropriate means of preventing unwanted drone use, IEEE Spectrum reports.