Japanese Trains Go By Barking Like Dogs to Scare Deer From Tracks

Japan has a plan to keep trains from hitting so many deer.

Make the trains bark like dogs. Screeching and snorting helps, too.

Trains pummel deer that wander onto the tracks all the time in Japan and officials have figured out that blasting the sound of a deer snorting for three seconds, grabs their attention.

Then they play 20 seconds of a barking dog to scare them away from the tracks. They say the results have been promising so far, and designers at Tokyo's Railway Technical Research Institute say the new technology could reduce animal collisions by 45-percent.

In their testing phase, they've seen about half as many deer hanging out near the tracks. And they're only doing it in rural areas, not cities because they'd get noise complaints.

By the way, there's actually a reason deer are so attracted to train tracks. And it involves the amount of IRON they need in their diet. Tiny shards of iron break off the tracks all the time as part of the normal wear and tear from trains going over them. So the deer LICK the rails to pick those shards of iron up, kind of like a vitamin supplement.

Japanese trains will be retrofitted with sound devices starting in 2019.