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Taxidermy Animal Drones

Posted: January 15, 2017

When I first read about, but hadn't yet seen, Copter Company's taxidermy animal drones I though they just sounded kinda goofy. Then I got a look at the Orvillecopter here. A spread-eagle taxidermied quad-cat-ter flying around in perpetual wide-eyed alarm at Dutch creators Bart Jansen's and Arjen Beltman's behest. And I gotta say, I was uncomfortable. Borderline disturbed. Both because the visuals are Level 3-1/2 (out of 5) creepy, and because I couldn't help but think of my girlfriend's cat Zanzibar all dead and stuffed and getting propellered around the sky to the amusement of a bunch of geeky engineers. I mean, come on, dead or not, Orvillecopter was someone's cat!

Turns out it was Jansen's own cat. Orville. Jansen named his brother Wilbur, after the Wrights. In 2012 Orville was killed by a car, so Jansen "decided to pay tribute to his lost life by giving him a new one." An electronic one. It would allow him to continue partaking in his favorite activity: bird stalking. So...yeah. Jansen's cat, Jansen's views on life, Jansens' prerogative, I guess. Gotta love the geeky engineers.

Copter Company has also built several more taxidermy drones with other, less pet-worthy animals since Orvillecopter. Sharkjet mounts a small gray hunter to a pair of wings, while Das Boot calls itself the first ever badger submarine. You can also check out Jansen and Beltman's Ostrichcopter and Ratcopter on their website. At printing, Copter Company did not have any of their taxidermy animal drones listed for sale.

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