It was a great day when tracking animals went from finding them embedded with arrows to putting bands on their legs. Now an even less burdensome method is being tested to track an endangered species.
The Welsh water vole was once found across Wales, but now is limited to a few small populations, making them almost extinct. Studying these creatures is a problem, because they are small, shy, and can be mistaken for rats. Scientists want to track water voles to find their preferred habitats so that efforts can be made to accommodate them. But how to find them? Maybe the answer is glitter.
An experiment was conducted on some Welsh water voles raised in captivity. They were fed edible purple glitter smeared on apples in the hopes that they would produce sparkly poop. Finding glittery poop in the wild would help conservationists determine where the voles have been even when they don't want to be seen. The test was deemed successful when sparkly purple poop appeared. The next step is feeding glitter to wild voles. The real challenge will be to feed voles without feeding other wild species as well. -via Metafiler
(Image credit: Peter Trimming)
Comments (1)