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Obviously, animals wearing outfits are adorable, but researchers all over the world
are decking out animals with accessories for plenty of other reasons,
all in the name of science.
Instead of miniature hats and diamond-studded collars,
these researchers are attaching special devices onto various critters
to learn more about them, from tracking elusive species’ travels
and behaviors to even controlling their movements.
Here are six ways scientists have used technological trinkets
to discover more about animals and the places they live.
Pollinators and their plants are in decline around the world.
While the primary blame of this pollination loss is likely on humans for removing
and fragmenting habitats, it’s a challenge to study the specifics
of how altering ecosystems may be impacting pollinators.
As you can imagine, tracking wee little pollinators is no easy task.
For instance, hummingbirds are important pollinators
of tropical forest plants in Costa Rica. While they may be some of
the teeniest birds around, they still happen to be pretty large
compared to other flower visitors. So a 2017 master’s thesis
investigated what hummingbirds were up to in the face of changing habitats.
These researchers used tiny radio frequency identification, or RFID, readers
to read transponder tags that they attached to multiple species of hummingbirds,
to see how they moved through habitats in search of a meal.
The studies took place across large tracts of forests, with some sections split up
by pasture and by patches of scrub, or previously damaged forest that is
now regenerating. The researchers left
out unlimited food in all those areas to make sure the amount of food available
wasn’t skewing results. These tracking studies found
that some species didn’t mind all that much and were found traveling through all areas,
from pasture to healthy forest. But certain species avoided the pastures entirely,
and others even seemed to avoid the scrub too, sticking only to the
healthy interior forest for travel. There are a few possible reasons only
some species avoided these areas. There could be a higher risk of predators
finding them outside the denser forest. Some of them might even be fearful of
encountering more aggressive hummingbirds that would be harder
to escape in the open, but more research needs to
be done to help us understand these factors. Understanding these movement patterns could help
in regeneration efforts and guide how we approach
restoring fragmented ecosystems and creating pollinator corridors.
And while we’re tracking the movement of important pollinators,
we might also want to track their predators as well.
The Asian yellow-legged hornet is a not-so-welcome introduced species that is
spreading around the world and happens to be a predator to our beloved bees.
While they’re fine to thrive in their own ecosystem,
these hornets have been putting European pollinators at risk
since their accidental introduction to France around 2004.
They’ve been spreading at a rate of about 70 kilometers a year,
even making the jump over to the UK in 2016. The thing is, even though we’re trying to keep
tabs on them and limit their spread, they’re just really tough to track down.
Their nests are well-hidden, and you can imagine how difficult it is
to follow a hornet back to its nest just by watching it.
The good news is, these hornets can carry a lot of weight
since they are built for carrying bees back home for dinner.
So researchers started outfitting them with radio telemetry tags tied around their
little waists using cotton thread in order to track them to their nests.
Once they released the hornets, they were able to locate their
nests within just hours. And these weren’t short flights.
Some hornets flew over a kilometer back to their homes!
Not only is this kind of research helpful in finding nests and trying to stop
the spread, but it also allows us to learn a lot more about their ecology.
New discoveries about their lives might lead to better managing their numbers
and controlling their invasion outside of their home turf.
New Caledonian crows are already pretty notorious for their incredible tool use.
They not only use tools to extract food from plant material,
but they also manufacture different types of tools over
different geographical regions, showing a whole new level of sophistication.
And while it's been suspected that New Caledonian crows are passing on their
tool skills on to each other, understanding their social habits could unlock some
interesting information about how this information is shared from crow to crow.
In a study that tracked 34 of these clever crows,
special receivers were strapped to them using little harnesses.
These devices act differently than a typical radio transmitting device,
in that they also send information out about other nearby tags.
This means they can be used to create maps of social interactions
between all tagged crows, including how long they hang out together,
and how far apart they are. And the results were wild.
Over seven days, these crows logged 28,000 social encounters!
Those are some seriously extraverted birds! And that showed the researchers they were
much more social than your average crow and did a lot of interacting with
birds they weren’t even related to. Some of these interactions likely
included watching each other use tools, so when it comes to passing along information,
it’s not just staying in the family. It’s no wonder they’re so clever; they’re
chatting up all the other crows around them and watching what each other are up to.
The wandering glider dragonfly is an impressive flyer
and is known for making its way across entire oceans during migration.
Not too shabby for an insect only 5 centimeters long!
By studying their incredible flight capabilities, we might become better flyers
ourselves, by mimicking their flight performance in human-made devices.
So researchers accessorized these dragonflies with small loads attached to their
undersides to learn more about what makes them such incredible flyers.
When these load-bearing insects were dropped mid-air,
researchers measured their flight response to the added weight.
With this, they were able to estimate the total aerodynamic force on these insects
while they were still able to maintain flight. That is, they measured the forces acting
on the dragonflies as they fly, relative to the air around them.
And it’s impressive, as these weighed-down dragonflies could handle
aerodynamic forces equivalent to 4.3 times their own body weight.
For some flying species, we’ve really only studied their flight performance
in terms of lifting off with a load, and not necessarily how their body reacts
to recovering after being
dropped with extra weight. And in the case of these wandering gliders,
they were able to handle a much heavier load through this
dropping method compared to earlier studies that measured their take-off abilities.
That means using this method on other species could give us a stronger
comparison between their flight performances, and performances under different conditions.
And this will also help us understand how wing shape, wing flexibility,
and other factors are influencing differences in those species’ aerial abilities.
Which of course could be important information for use in
engineering applications and future flying machine designs.
Next, let’s head from the air to the sea. You might not be surprised to learn that
there are special instruments used to measure things like ocean
temperature and wind conditions, but thanks to seals,
we can take these measurements into very remote locations we
couldn’t otherwise reach! Southern elephant seals cover
a lot of area during their months at sea, from the sea ice zone to subtropical waters.
They can also dive to incredible depths, reaching as deep as 2,000 meters.
These seals hang out in regions where there just isn’t a lot of other sampling
going on, since they aren’t exactly ideal locations for humans to be hanging out.
So, we get the seals to do the monitoring work for us!
While they go about their business, GPS tags and satellite multisensors
glued to the backs and noggins of seals are recording and sending out
all kinds of data, including the water temperature, salinity, and pressure.
This information helps in the analysis and forecasts of ocean temperature,
wave and wind conditions, and even phytoplankton blooms.
So we can thank elephant seals for helping us out with more accurate
weather predictions and uncovering some mysteries of the oceans for us.
Last but not least on our list of great animal accessories,
we’ve got the cyborg cockroaches. They’re here, looking for work.
Jobs in search and rescue. Okay, maybe making robot animal
hybrids sounds like something out of a science fiction film,
but it’s not too far from reality. A fancy backpack attached to a
cockroach can actually work as a neuro-controller microcircuit.
Yes! Brain control! Wires connected to
the insect’s antennae are used to control the cockroach’s movement.
We can do this by sending electrical charges through the antennae
that trick the roach into believing it has detected an obstacle,
causing it to veer in a new direction. Since this device is hooked up to Bluetooth,
its signal is very easy to track: All you need is a cell phone!
While watching the insect’s direction, speed, and other movement information,
the electrical charges sent to their antennae are adjusted to steer them into
different directions, sending them into areas we can’t easily reach otherwise.
This would be a significant advantage if used in search and rescue missions,
like inside a collapsed building, to better focus our efforts and find
trapped people sooner! Cockroaches can go anywhere,
even if they have a fancy little backpack on. We might not see a cockroach coming to our
rescue in the immediate future, but this kind of technology is only
getting better, as we’re able to gather more information with smaller and smaller devices.
These types of studies are becoming more popular all the time,
and are helping us expand our knowledge of ecology, physiology, and evolution!
With these new studies, we do also have to be careful in how we use them,
and make sure that they are not negatively impacting the species we’re studying.
Devices, of course, can change an animal's normal behavior,
or even put significant energy demands on them, making it more difficult for them to survive.
Ensuring these devices don’t impact their daily lives has to remain a major focus
of these types of studies moving forward. And the good news is,
we’re getting really good at it. We’ve even developed small devices
that can be injected with a syringe. That means animals can go about their day
none the wiser of the important information they’re sending our way.
Thanks to these tech accessories, we can learn so much about individual animals,
entire populations, and the world around them that would otherwise remain a mystery to us.
And if you’re the type of person who enjoys learning how we can use science
to understand our mysterious world, you might want to check out
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