Friday, Dec 26

Welcome to Your Daily Dot where Dot will share tips, advice, and stories on how we can make our world better.

Dear Reader,

Many of us likely remember the stories about how birds and animals were behaving strangely in the hours before the horrific tsunami of Boxing Day 2004, while humans obliviously carried on with their normal activities. 

Similarly, a story in Reasons to be Cheerful explains: “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.” The goats were behaving normally and, as it turns out, the eruption was minor and caused no damage. Goats, it turns out, don’t sweat the small stuff.

Now Wikelski wants to expand the ability to monitor animal behavior via a project called ICARUS (the International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space). “ICARUS 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,” the story tells us. It’s a way for scientists to gather and interpret data that can not only help preserve ecosystems, but also potentially protect humans from harm.

Already, scientists have learned that birds warn each other about obstacles such as wind turbines. Don’t miss this fascinating look into what animals know — and how we can broadly tap into that information. 

Intuitively,

Dot

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