So, today had an argument with my zoology teacher today in regards to microchipping animals, to be more specific, horses. She insisted that owners of outrageously expensive horses have them implanted with a microchip that can be tracked trough GPS, and even have the option to jam any scanners that may try to identify it. I argued that microchips cannot be tracked since they’re a passive type and require an external, temporary, power source to facilitate the information transfer, and in regards to the jamming, I also argued that it’s not actually jamming, more likely just a password protected microchip. Of course, she kept her own ideas, which was hard for me, as a student, to even budge her opinion. I just ended up talking to her about my microchip (NExT) and just laughed it off, and only believed me after a demonstration, which sadly ended with her saying. “It’s probably just something very cheap, compared to the very advanced ones horse owners use.” Made me giggle a bit to be honest.
Anyhow, I don’t want to sound dumb but, are there actually any microchips that are able to do that? I’m pretty sure that is not possible so I’m asking you guys, I might be wrong.
From a student to a teacher, maybe your best approach would be
“I was very intrigued by our discussion and it sounds like some very interesting technology, I would love to learn some more about it could you provide me with some links?”
There are tracking “chips” used, but they are significantly bigger and are not embedded in the animal. They are attached to the outside in a number of ways.
Some of them just record GPS locations and are usually dropped (see the recent magpie story) so that they can be read. Others contain transmitters and are either used for radio direction finding or (in the case of whales and sharks) transmit the gps coordinates back when they can.
If GPS capable chips were small enough to inject into horses they would be able to inject them into magpies to track them too.
I could have tried that approach, you’re right. Unfortunately I’m not known for being that friendly, I have a bad habit of expressing myself in a less disireable way, unintentionally that is.
I’ve actually seen these systems marketed using fud… basically it’s a standard FDX-B microchip inside the animal but then there is a scanner you use to scan the microchip with, and the scanner has a GPS unit. It’s the most ridiculous fucking bullshit garbage I’ve ever seen, but when people don’t understand the technology and they are willing to buy a horse for $150,000… It sounds good that you would spend $1,000 on such a ridiculous stupid thing.
I guess I can see that, but I’m one of those folks that feels like once they physically have your horse, that’s the least of problems You throw em in a hauler set up the same way they set them up to steal anything else with GPS. If crackhead ATM thieves can figure that out, people stealing million dollar horses are probably on par haha
now it occurs to me, I might need to look into embedding an AirTag into a 3D print, mid print like I’ve done with rfid tags
You throw em in a hauler set up the same way they set them up to steal anything else with GPS. If crackhead ATM thieves can figure that out, people stealing million dollar horses are probably on par haha