Teaching Dogs to Fly Planes

Teaching Dogs to fly planes

While dogs can be taught to do awesome things like locate explosives, help amputees around the house or in public, sense blood sugar changes, help a child to walk, and even sniff out electronic devices, teaching them to fly a plane seems like a bad idea. I'm no aviator, but I'm pretty sure that the entire flight process is beyond the ability of a dog. It appears England is taking the term unmanned Aircraft to a whole new level. From The Independent:According to an aviation joke, planes only need two crew members – a pilot and a dog. The pilot’s job is to feed the dog. The dog’s job is to bite the pilot if he touches the controls. But now a ground-breaking television series will place Britain’s most intelligent canines in the cockpit in a bid to discover if a dog can be successfully taught the skills to fly a plane.Using participants handpicked from rescue centres, the Sky 1 series, Dogs Might Fly, aims to prove that the memory and reasoning abilities possessed by the brightest pets could be directed towards mastering the controls of a light aircraft.Amateur fliers at a London airfield last week reported the unusual sight of a dog strapped on to a flat-bed truck, grappling with aircraft-style controls until it learnt to drive the vehicle in circles. Sky confirmed that the dog – which appeared to be a Labrador or similar – was performing simulation training in preparation for a possible first flight.

Caroline Hawkins, creative director of Oxford Scientific Films, the Bafta-winning documentary-makers behind the series, said: “This sequence forms part of our project to look at dogs’ extraordinary ability. The ultimate question is ‘could a dog fly a plane?’ so we have undertaken some training using an aircraft simulator.”The experiment follows a New Zealand exercise in 2012 in which three dogs took turns to drive a Mini Countryman solo down a race track in Auckland after being trained to start the car, put it in gear and then travel 70 metres before bringing it to a stop.See the full story and analysis from an Emeritus Professor of Dog Psychology, at The Independent.[mwi-cat-listing cat="94" ppp="4" cols="4" desc="false" type="view" btn_color="black" ]