Japanese trains bark like dogs so deer don’t get run over

In a move to protect wildlife, trains in Japan have started barking like dogs and snorting like deer in order to prevent accidents.

According to a Japanese newspaer Asahi Shimbun newspaper, deer often congregate to lick the train tracks in the evening and late at night – which, sadly, leads to regular collisions.

However, authorities found that blaring the animal sounds from the top of oncoming trains has bee found to shoo away the deer in good time to prevent any crashes.

Officials at the Railway Technical Research Institute said that there were 45 per cent fewer deer on the tracks when the sounds were played, compared to when the trains ran as normal.

They explained that deer will repeated let off a short, shrill snort when they want to alert other deer to danger.

Researchers decided to combine the warning snort with the sound of an animal deer are afraid of – dogs. In tests, a three-second-long recording of a deer snort and 20 seconds of a barking dog were played from a running train car at night.

Deer were seen from aboard the trains just 7.5 times per 100km, around 45 per cent less than when the sounds weren’t played.

According to an RTRI official who spoke to the Japanese newspaper, “If our new contraption works, that will obviate the need for installing anti-trespass facilities at many locations.”