The Galapagos Island of Seymour Norte, off the coast of Ecuador, has a vicious invasive rat problem. Despite efforts to curb the spread of the rats in 2007, conservationists found the tiny island was infested yet again a decade later by two common rat species. This time, they employed a high-tech solution to fight the vermin: autonomous drones that fly along predetermined paths and drop bombs of rodent poison, Wired reports. Invasive rodents have decimated native species like iguanas and a number of birds by eating their eggs, and offspring. The government of Ecuador partnered with Island Conservation, an American non-profit, to devise a solution: six-rotor drones specially designed to drop an immense 44 pounds of rat poison pellets per trip.

I get the feeling you don't dislike rats enough. Because your struggles with the rodents chewing through your house pale in comparison to the problems wrought by rodents chewing through entire island ecosystems. Release just one pregnant rat on an island and soon enough the invasive predators will have decimated that pristine environment like an atom bomb. Sure, rats on their own are pretty neat, but we've got a nasty habit of transporting them where they don't belong, at which point they transform into menaces. Such is the plight of the Galapagos Island of Seymour Norte, a speck of 455 acres off the coast of Ecuador. In 2007, conservationists succeeded in ridding the island of invasive rats, but a decade later, the fiends had returned, likely by swimming from the neighboring island of Baltra.