The Many Ways Scientists are Turning Birds into Feathered Field Assistants
April 10, 2025 at 11:07PMYou’ve probably heard of the internet of things, which is connectivity within everyday objects that can receive and send data. (Think smart TVs, dishwashers, fridges, cars, etc.) For Audubon Magazine, Ashley Stimpson reports on the internet of animals, offering five examples of bird species who, with small censors attached, can help humans learn more about weather patterns, protect whales from ship strikes, nab bird poachers, and more.
In the summer of 2022, a year when no curlew hunting was allowed in France, GPS tags provided the scientists with some unexpected data: the precise times and locations that tagged birds were poached. On July 31 a juvenile curlew arrived in the Bay of Canches in northern France after a two-day migration from Germany. A week later, at 5:13 a.m., the bird flew to a nearby pond beside a hunting blind. By 5:33 the tag had stopped moving and was inside the blind. Over the course of the morning, the GPS tag left behind a grim trail of breadcrumbs—through a parking lot, down a series of rural roads, and, finally, to a private residence. The researchers also detected the poaching of three other Eurasian Curlews and immediately reported the cases to the police, who, thanks to the birds themselves, had the street addresses of three of the four suspects. All three claimed they had found the birds already dead and were trying to help scientists by returning the tags. But the sensors, which were constantly gathering data like location, altitude, and velocity, provided plenty of evidence to the contrary. So far, one hunter has been convicted of shooting an unauthorized species and received a fine and a six-month suspension of his hunting permit. Jiguet and the team published a paper in 2023 about their experience, hoping it would encourage fellow scientists to use bird-tracking technology to help enforce conservation laws and to send a message to would-be poachers. “The following year, no tagged birds were shot,” says the scientist, “so maybe the message was received.”
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/04/10/the-many-ways-scientists-are-turning-birds-into-feathered-field-assistants/
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