From Lambert: Skip this bit of geopolitical ignorance. Science is interesting.
By Hilary Rosner, science journalist and associate director of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. Originally published in Undark.
In the spring of 2022, while doing research for my book, I spoke with a meadow bird biologist. For me, the meadow lark sings a lovely melodious song that heralds the beginning of spring. Biologists were soon on the scene tagging the birds and equipping some with small transmitters, allowing researchers to track their movements over several years.with the birds of the meadow It’s not going well – and meadowlark populations in particular are in sharp decline – the project sought to find out where the birds go each spring and fall. Did they return to the exact same breeding grounds every year? Did they follow the same path? This data can help inform conservation planning.
However, the research faced obstacles. The new high-tech tag, developed in Germany and part of a system known as ICARUS, that she and other scientists have been waiting for will not arrive on time. ICARUS (International Cooperation for Animal Research in Space) was built to work by communicating with the Russian module on the International Space Station. All that effort was dashed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent drawing of the scientific iron curtain. The ICARUS team went back to the drawing board and redesigned the system to work without Russia, but it took her more than two years to get the new tag ready for use.
During our conversation, I was struck by how the field ecology of the eastern United States intersected with war and geopolitics thousands of miles away. What does the life of these yellow-breasted songbirds have to do with Vladimir Putin? It seemed very far-fetched, but at the same time it was a stark reminder of how interconnected the Earth really is.
Martin Wikelski understands this. He is the German scientist who developed his ill-fated ICARUS transmitter, and has spent nearly 30 years working on the “internet of animals,” a network of sensor-equipped creatures and the data they generate that serve as a window into humans. has been spent building. Introducing all kinds of animal experiences. Mr. Vikelsky’s new book “The Internet of Animals: Discovering the collective intelligence of life on Earth” chronicles his quest to design, build, and launch this network. This is how science develops, how questions about biology and ecology connect with space agencies and fascist regimes, and how years fade into decades. An interesting personal account of. An accomplished biologist, Wikelski is also an indefatigable entrepreneur and a master storyteller.
Wikelski’s quest to understand the hidden lives of animals began in the late 1990s as a junior professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Wikelski teamed up with Bill Cochran, a wildlife biologist and basement tinker who pioneered the use of radio telemetry to track animals, to find out what influences the migratory routes of songbirds. , also tried to figure out whether different species of birds communicate with each other during their journeys.
To do so, they set out across the Illinois prairies on “good migration nights,” waiting for the Swainson’s Thrush to take off, to which Cochran attached a small transmitter and microphone. Researchers have turned a jalopy into a laboratory on wheels. They cut a hole in the roof of the car and inserted an antenna attached to a pole through it. “Every night we drove after a bird like we were chasing a tornado,” Wikelski writes. All we had to do was pick up speed and chase the thrush while continuously recording its sounds. ”
This gonzo research effort has yielded groundbreaking insights into how birds communicate. Birds fly to a certain altitude, call, and hear the responses of other birds. If you get a response, the bird will know it’s safe and has found a good path. The study revealed that “there was a highway in the sky, where birds provided each other with vital information about how high to fly, where to go, and who to follow.” writes Wikelski. This “ancient organic symphony,” he writes, “was created as animals exchanged information across species and continents.” He argues that the time has come for humanity to “synchronize.”
Wikelski continued to work on a series of increasingly high-tech animal tracking systems that evolved as technology advanced. In the early 2000s, Barro of the Panama-based Smithsonian Institution, along with colleagues from his Colorado Island field station, developed his system called ARTS (Automatic Radio Telemetry System), which allows scientists to track the movements of mammals in the rainforest. developed the system. This allows biologists to discover who was eating who, and when and where. As data from the tagged animals began to accumulate, Wikelski and his collaborators created Movebank, an online “living, pulsating history of the Earth.” Did.
One night in Panama in 2001, Wikelski was sitting outside with George Swenson. George Swenson was a legendary radio astronomer at the University of Illinois known for his astronomical advances, including the design of the Very Large Array Telescope. Mr. Swenson told Mr. Wikelski that he had not thought big enough. “You ecologists have a great responsibility to the world, but you are not fulfilling that responsibility. You think too small, you are not globally organized, you are too small to think, you are not globally organized, and you are not doing what governments and society as a whole are asking or asking. We are not looking for the tools we really need to answer the questions we should ask.”
Mr. Swenson challenged Mr. Wikelski to “launch a scientific system designed to use satellites to study the ecology of animals on Earth.” So Wikelski called Bill Cochran, a migratory bird partner and longtime friend of Swenson’s, for “practical” advice. Cochrane said such a system is possible and could work by relaying data through the ISS. Thus was born ICARUS, which Wikelski predicted would be operational by 2005.
Mr. Wikelski’s book traces the reality of the extraordinary effort that took nearly 20 years, not just four years, to get ICARUS off the ground. It went live in 2020, experienced technical issues in 2021, and culminated in February 2022. At this time, he only needed one signature to bring ICARUS back online. Then Russia invaded Ukraine. In addition to this story, the book is also filled with fascinating anecdotes about animals and their underrated intelligence. For example, the Galápagos brown mouse on Santa Fe Island knew it could get into Wikelski’s tent, crawling up his arm, nibbling on his fingers, and even sitting on him. On his head – not when he was alone on the island, but not when other members of the field team hated rats.
Why is building an animal internet so important that Wikelski has dedicated decades of his career to it? What can we, especially in the West, extract from it for our own benefit? Our path to seeing the natural world only from our perspective is a path to destruction. Wikelski said the “next chapter of human evolution” is the interspecies era, in which humans recognize that they are partners with other species, consider their needs when making decisions, and ” We believe that we can connect the knowledge of other species with our own knowledge. There are many other benefits of this interspecific era, not least of which is the ability to tap into an animal’s sixth sense to detect when something big is happening in the environment, such as a buildup of toxins in the landscape or a disaster. He says it will be possible to predict things like the beginning of a. El Nino phenomenon and locust outbreak.
All of these are important. However, my only complaint about the “Internet of Animals” is that it focuses too much on what animals can tell us about things that can cause us harm. we — as opposed to being able to reveal what harm our actions may cause — like predicting earthquakes. they. Perhaps this is just a tool to convince a wider audience of the project’s potential. But the real value of the Internet of Animals goes back to the pasture. Unless we know what routes they take, where they land along the way, and what pitfalls, natural or man-made, may cause their journeys to end in tragedy. Habitat, food, and environment cannot be effectively protected. and other resources they need to survive. The Internet of Animals is about the currently invisible parts of our world: how animals distribute seeds, how they cope with the effects of climate change, and how they interact with animals when there’s no one around to watch. helps you understand how they interact.
When a tree falls in the forest, it naturally makes a sound, whether or not there are people there. But what exactly does the sound sound like and what happens next? Who hides, who takes off, who rushes to grab the seeds and save them, who loses the nest and has to leave in search of a new home? It is a secret that Icarus may yet reveal. . Learning these things can open our eyes to the amazing hidden lives of our animal neighbors and help us better protect the planet that sustains us all.
