Thanks to their speed and
general habit of monkeying
around, accurately monitoring
primate behaviour can be a tall
order. The use of camera traps
has made things significantly
easier, but one team in the
rainforest of Taï National Park
in Côte d’Ivoire are taking a
different tack: they are using
acoustic sensors to record the
primates’ calls.
The researchers developed
an algorithm that automatically
identifies the calls of three
monkey species. They were
then able to estimate how many
animals were in a given area. It
i h d h h b
used o a o co se a o s s
g
i l i.Drones armed with an array of high-tech sensors
and cameras are increasingly being used to moni-
tor wildlife. However, a team of researchers from
Ocean Alliance are finding out more than ever
about whales by fitting their drones with a simple
perspex dish.
When whales breathe out through their blow-
hole, Ocean Alliance’s so-called SnotBot can fly
through the cloud of mucus and expelled air to
gather biological material on its dish. This is less
invasive than the traditional technique of collect-
ing a tissue biopsy with a dart. A ‘snot’ sample
can provide genetic material, as well as data on
microbiomes, pregnancy hormones and even
traces of pollutants in the water.In South Africa a rhino is killed every eight hours.
With poaching rates increasing by more than
9,000 per cent since 2007, the species are being
driven towards extincti.
Trying to monitor po r-
eas of rhino habitat is a g
but help may be on ha f f -
bined tracker and secu
Chester University’s Pa g
the Real-time Anti-poa g ( )
tracker combines GPS,
video camera mounted a s a o e bo ed
the rhino’s horn. If an a ,
rate monitor triggers a
the incident, while the p
its exact location. A te g
dispatched to the scen b h li l i g
poachers little time to.The rhino is sedated before the RAPID RAPID RESPONSE
device is mounted into its hornanimals were in a given area. It
is hoped that the system can be
usedto allow conservationists
to monitor population changes
in real time.007, the species are being
ion.
oachers across the vast arrr-
a mammoth undertaking,
and in the form of a com-
urity system designed by
aul O’Donoghue. Dubbed
aching Device (RAPID), the
S, a heart monitor and
d in a small holebored in
animal is killed,the heart
n alarm alerting rangers to
GPS provides them with
am of rangers can then beeee
ne by helicopter, leavingggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg
harvest the horn.SIMIAN
SOUNDS
“An individual whale may only surface for a
matter of minutes,” explains Ocean Alliance CEO
Iain Kerr. “We might see 30 whales in a day and
we would [previously] have been happy if we’d
just collected five or six samples. With the drone
we can get on the whale much more quickly and
that count could go up to 15 samples a day.”
The drone also carries a camera, so the
scientists can study the whales without spook-
ing them. “We can see whales behaving in ways
that we wouldn’t get otherwise,” Kerr says. “Only
recently, we recorded a mother and calf together
in an incredibly intimate moment. With a boat,
the calf would immediately go underneath the
mother and you wouldn’t see it at all.”SNOT AT SEA
NATURE