It’s no longer enough just to know where an animal is and where it has been wandering. In 2016, we’re now looking at animal health and fitness too, in order to aid conservation efforts.
Scientists at the University of California at Santa Cruz have crafted higher-tech collars, which beyond simply GPS, track metabolic costs, the when and how animals are burning calories.
“The caloric budget of an animal is sort of its life blood” said Chris Wilmers, an ecology professor at the university and co-investigator on the project. “If an animal burns more calories than it’s taking in, it’s going to die. We are able to say how many calories the animal burned minute by minute, as its moving across the landscape, carrying out all the functions it needs to do, to live and survive.”
Wolves are the first such creatures being tested; until no, there has been no information collected or attempted to be collected about metabolic processes. Dogs have been a stand-in for wolves, with the so-called smart collars being first calibrated and tested on wolves’ domestic descendents. Training dogs to walk and run in a lab was particularly difficult for scientists; so too was working with captive wolves.
Now, however, the collars have been deployed on wolves in Denali National Park in Alaska, a varied environment that features different types of pretty and potential lifestyles.
It’s pretty breathtaking,” said Caleb Bryce, a doctoral student working on the project. “They are truly the symbol of wilderness.”
These creatures are merely the first to be tested. While such carnivores are of big interest since their populations are in decline, researchers are utilizing the collars on fish, sharks, and whales as well. Understanding the ecology of animals better, learning what the need to survive and how they use their energy, will help inform conservation efforts. Keeping wolves alive means keeping herbivorous animals populations in check, which help maintain the growth of plants and trees, and so stays in harmony a delicate ecological balance.
Source: Smart Collars Deployed to Study Wolves’ Ecology | Ecorazzi