Have you heard of the Internet of Things, where your lunchbox will talk to the Internet because, uh, it must be cool?
This is really cool – the Internet of Animals:
Icarus stands for International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space. Scientists taking part in the Icarus-initiative are working together to study the behavior of animals.
Scientists want to use Icarus to find out more about the life of animals on earth: the migratory routes they take and their living conditions. These findings will aid behavioural research, species protection and research into the paths taken in the spread of infectious diseases. The information should even help to predict ecological changes and natural disasters.
In the process, the Icarus researchers will attach mini-transmitters to a variety of animal species. These transmitters then send their measurement data to a receiver station in space. The receiver station in turn transmits the data to a ground station from where it is sent to the relevant teams of researchers. The results will be published in a database that will be accessible to everyone: movebank
NewScientist (2 April 2022, paywall) interviewed the founder of ICARUS, Martin Wikelski, and this bit stuck in my brain:
Could animal networks also help with more mainstream predictions, such as weather forecasting?
Yes, many systems are really ripe for animal predictions. For example, the gannets and the shorebirds in the western part of Mexico – they tell you in spring how the harvest of anchovies and other fish will be in the fall, because they are already tuning in to the fry production early in the season. Or boobies in the Indo Pacific will tell you how strong the next El Niño will be because – months ahead of time – they all give up their breeding schedules. They either abandon the eggs or they don’t even lay eggs. And then you know it will be a strong El Niño. We already have those kinds of long-term predictions, but we have not brought them together yet on a global scale. And that goes back to the internet of animals. That is what’s coming.
That an entire population chooses, so to speak, not to lay eggs speaks to a communications mechanism, if we assume that only some of the members are encountering conditions that prompt the choice. That, in itself, is interesting – a sort of natural communications network.
