https://www.futurity.org/wearable-dolphins-2849292-2/
"Human disturbances in dolphin habitat include climate change, overfishing, and
noise pollution from construction, oil exploration, and navy sonar activity.
These disturbances can interrupt important animal behavior like foraging for
fish and socializing, but measuring disturbance is difficult under water.
Devices very similar to fitness trackers used by humans—known as biologging
tags—are used in biology research but estimating the energetic cost of swimming
has been challenging. With custom biologging tags, the engineers now are able
to measure animal movement during thousands of strokes as they swim.
“Our goal is to use tag data to estimate foraging events, how many fish were
consumed during a day, and connect that to estimates of how much energy
dolphins use during the movement required to catch those fish,” says Alex
Shorter, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of
Michigan and senior author of a paper in the
Journal of Experimental Biology
on the work.
“This is important for conservation because we can then use our approach to
estimate energetic costs when these animals are disturbed.”
In the new work, the researchers developed estimates of energetic cost from tag
data by working with their human and animal collaborators at Dolphin Quest
Oahu. In that environment, the researchers could conduct repeatable swimming
trials over a range of speeds from multiple animals to generate the data they
needed to estimate how much energy the animals used as they swam. Marine mammal
specialists trained the dolphins to wear the tracker during lap trials and
periods of free swimming."
Via Rixty Dixet.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
