Robotic dragonfly toys made by WowWee Robotics are being snatched by birds of prey. One boy had his grabbed by a Red-tailed hawk not long after unwrapping one on Christmas day. You can read his account of the event. Engadget reports that WowWee has been contacted by 45 people about the same issue in the past two months.

There are bats, birds and other insects out there that will find it a cinch to catch robot butterfly's, mechanical birds or even cyborg moths. It will be a long time until our artificial flyers will be anywhere near a match for Nature's airbourne hunter-killers.

During both world wars pigeons were used to carry messages across enemy lines in Europe, leading to some attempts to use Peregrine falcons to catch the messengers. Perhaps we'll see a resurgence of that tactic if animal-like robots do see active service.