{"id":649150,"date":"2013-03-27T12:04:47","date_gmt":"2013-03-27T16:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ted.com\/?p=73733"},"modified":"2013-03-27T12:04:47","modified_gmt":"2013-03-27T16:04:47","slug":"4-unexpected-lion-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/649150","title":{"rendered":"4 unexpected lion stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Richard-Turere-TED2013\"<\/a>Richard Turere, 13, grew up hating lions. In Nairobi National Park, where he lives, lions roam freely and often targeted his family\u2019s livestock at night. And yet Turere also hated the only solution his community had come up with to stop lion attacks on cows — killing the majestic creatures.<\/p>\n

\"RichardRichard Turere: My invention that made peace with lions<\/span><\/a>\u201cI had to find a way of solving this problem,\u201d says Turere in today\u2019s talk<\/a>, filmed at TED2013.<\/p>\n

First, Turere tried using fire and scarecrows, but both failed to scare off lions for the long-haul. So electronics-tinkerer Turere had another idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cI discovered that lions are afraid of a moving light,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I got an old car battery and an indicator box, a small device found in a motorcycle that tells motorists when they want to turn right or left. It blinks.\u201d<\/p>\n

He combined these items with a light switch, a torch from a broken flashlight and solar powering. Together, they made a blinking device that flashes in unpredictable patterns, emulating a person walking with a flashlight. The device works wonders for keeping lions away.<\/p>\n

\u201cI set this up in my home two years ago and since then we have never experienced any problem with the lions,\u201d says Turere, adding that he has now made devices for seven families in his community and taught friends to build them too.<\/p>\n

Turere boarded his very first airplane to come to TED2013. And on stage he shared with Chris Anderson the next device he\u2019d like to build to keep lions away — his version of an electric fence. Young Turere may be on to something. In an article in today\u2019s The New York Times<\/i><\/a>, the director of the Lion Research Center at the University of Minnesota says that, after 35 years of research, he sees fences as the most promising way to save the dwindling lion population, keeping them away from both livestock and people.<\/p>\n

Turere\u2019s device has helped him make peace with lions. Here, watch three more TED Talks that give unexpected looks at these oversized cats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"JohnJohn Kasaona: How poachers became caretakers<\/span><\/a>
\nJohn Kasaona: How poachers became caretakers<\/b><\/a>
\nIn this talk from TED2010, conservationist John Kasaona shares a wild idea his community had for conserving their local lion population: pay poachers, who know the bush and animal behavior incredibly well, to look out for the beautiful cats. And this approach is working. In 1995, there were 20 lions in Northwest Namibia. Today, there are more than 130.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"BeverlyBeverly + Dereck Joubert: Life lessons from big cats<\/span><\/a>
\nBeverly + Dereck Joubert: Life lessons from big cats<\/b><\/a><\/b>
\n\u201cOur lives have basically been like a super-long episode of \u2018CSI,\u2019\u201d says documentary filmmaker Dereck Joubert, who has spent 28 years following leopards and lions along with his partner, Beverly Joubert. And while, yes, these cats are killers — they also have incredible personalities. In this talk from TEDWomen, the pair shares amazing footage that humanizes lions.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"AndersAnders Ynnerman: Visualizing the medical data explosion<\/span><\/a>
\nAnders Ynnerman: Visualizing the medical data explosion<\/b><\/a><\/b>
\nWhat do lions have to do with medical data visualization? In this talk from TEDxG\u00f6teborg<\/a>, Anders Ynnerman shares how scientists parse the reams of data that medical scans produce for each patient. In it, he reveals how and why they took CAT scans of a lion from a local zoo.\u00a0 \u201cI think this is a great application for the future of this technology because there\u2019s very little known about the animal anatomy,\u201d he explains.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Richard Turere was just 12 when he came up with his lion-scaring device. Watch 8 more TED Talks from impressive kids, from a preteen app developer to an elementary school class that wrote a scientific research paper in crayon \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Turere, 13, grew up hating lions. In Nairobi National Park, where he lives, lions roam freely and often targeted his family\u2019s livestock at night. And yet Turere also hated the only solution his community had come up with to stop lion attacks on cows — killing the majestic creatures. Richard Turere: My invention that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7344,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-649150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7344"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}