The heat from Starlink’s receiving dishes helps keep cats and other small animals warm during cold winters.
Satellite dishes are turning into satellite dishes
Starlink is an important project by SpaceX and Elon Musk to provide humanity with high-speed satellite Internet. While it’s unclear how much benefit we humans will receive, this project is definitely proving hugely popular with cats, at least for now. The reason is that Starlink cat trays become an ideal place for cats to rest and stay warm in the cold winter.
Specifically, in a New Year’s Eve Twitter post, one user named Aaron Taylor captured an image of five cats huddled together on one of Starlink’s satellite dishes. Meanwhile, although the temperature outside seemed quite cold and the ground was still covered in snow, the heat emitted by the receiving dishes was enough to warm the kittens, causing them to continue lying there.
“Starlink works great,” says Aaron, “until the cats find that the dish gets a little warm on cold days.”
Creature comfort
It wouldn’t be surprising if Starlink’s receiving dishes could attract cats, as well as some other small creatures. Some Reddit users even used thermal cameras to determine why they liked to gather around the device. They said: “I checked my plate with a thermal camera and it actually looks like the whole plate, even the back is warm. So you can [see] animals underneath it or around it if it’s set on the ground.”
Meanwhile, some others have expressed concern about birds sitting on the edge of the pan, which can indiscriminately drop “mess” and affect the performance of the device. However, to date, no such incidents have been recorded.
In the past, publications like The Verge have rated Starlink’s quality quite poorly in its first round of testing. Now, given the above situation, perhaps they need to dig deeper to determine whether cats or other animals are the reason for this set of devices not working effectively or not.
In July and October last year, Starlink once scared a few people by forcing the Chinese space station to dodge its satellite twice to avoid nasty collisions. But this is a story around the Earth’s orbit. On earth, when winter has not yet passed, they may have to surrender to the carefree, innocent cats.
H/T:Futurism