‘In Goats We Trust’

When Mount Etna in Sicily rumbled this spring, news outlets around the world flashed dramatic photos of lava and ash. But Martin Wikelski was skeptical. The biologist, who directs the Department of Migration at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany, checked in with his most trusted forecasters: Twelve goats grazing on Etna’s slopes.

These goats have worn his lightweight tracking tags for more than a decade. Before each of the last seven major eruptions, they’d alerted the scientists with unusually frantic behavior. This time, they were calm. Further research showed that the widely reported eruption had looked visually striking but was actually minor and caused no damage.

“The goats were right,” Wikelski says from his office near Konstanz, Germany. “Therefore we still say, ‘in goats we trust.’” A monarch butterfly carries a tiny transmitter that is intended to provide information about its flight behavior.

Credit: MPIAB_MaxCine. Wikelski is the innovator behind a global vision, decades in the making, that could change animal research and conservation forever: ICARUS (the International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space) equips creatures from bats and birds to goats and giraffes with lightweight smart tags that beam data to satellites and CubeSats smaller satellites the size of a shoe box revealing real-time insights into animals’ rhythms.

Most scientists studying migration patterns or endangered animals only have the means to do research in a defined area. But often, the most illuminating answers are global. What if animal data from around the world could be linked to answer pertinent questions about the spread of bird flu, say, or to predict disasters? Investigating global animal migrations with an intelligent sensor network of animals the “Internet of Animals” opens a new frontier in harnessing animal observation as a tool for conservation.

From volcanoes to poaching, from climate shifts to disease outbreaks, ICARUS can gather and interpret data from creatures big and small to help protect ecosystems, and sometimes, people. The post In Goats We Trust appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.