The link in the first post has good info on it. But if you want to see something like this in action, go to youtube and search for "apache helicopter takes out insurgents" or some variation of that.

A thermal imaging system (or FLIR - forward looking infrared*) shows the differences in heat between various objects. Warm blooded mammals show up brightly against their cooler backgrounds, in colored images you can even see differences in heat around the body - warm heads and cooler extremities. You can see those differences in body heat in the pic of the deer below.

In theory you should be able to make out the outline of the animal you're looking at but looking through brush one obviously might not see the entire animal. Or if I got this right, if an animal is bedded and completely hidden to normal vision you might not even have to see the animal, its body heat might warm up the surrounding vegetation slightly but enough to cause a contrast against the other ambient vegetation.


It's always hard to make ethical arguments for or against new technology since it’s just a continuum going back to teeth and nails – we went from spears to bows and arrows to better bows to black powder to smokeless with faster, flatter trajectories to scopes to better scopes to range finders to you name it. It’s hard to criticize a fellow for using a high powered scope if you’re using peep sights because the fellow on the other side of you can criticize you for using smokeless powder and the arrow slinger can criticize the BP shooter and on and on.


[Linked Image]



* I may have FLIR and thermal imaging mixed up but it seems to me they both use the same basic principles, but I'm no expert at this.

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