• Question: What was the most amazing thing that you found out?

    Asked by 494anmh49 to Carrie, Cedric, Ellen, Ines, Rupert on 7 Mar 2017. This question was also asked by Sonia045, michaelb2017, 528anmh23, Guti7713, Enrique2004, nilpach.
    • Photo: Rupert Marshall

      Rupert Marshall answered on 7 Mar 2017:

      Every new discovery is interesting and sometimes the smallest make us seem most amazing. So playing a birdsong on a loudspeaker and seeing a bird come down and look at the speaker was pretty amazing. This is how we found out that birds from noisy cities don’t respond as strongly to songs from the countryside as they do to other city birds. Birds in noisy areas sing at a higher pitch – probably so they can be heard above the traffic. This made me wonder: could it lead to new species: city birds and country birds? If they’re not sure about each other’s song they might not be able to attract a mate. The investigation continues….

    • Photo: Ines Goncalves

      Ines Goncalves answered on 7 Mar 2017:

      “I don’t really know” is the honest answer, but I’m very proud of my first published finding so I can tell you about that one. I found that pipefish females (pipefishes are from the same family as seahorses, the males received the eggs from the females and basically go through pregnancy before giving birth to little miniatures of themselves) that mate with small males, which are not as good parents as large males, put more nutrients into their eggs. This means that they add that little bit of extra nutrition (they reproductively compensate) to the eggs to make up for the small males’ poor parenting skills.

    • Photo: Ellen Williams

      Ellen Williams answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      Science is full of pretty cool discoveries – I haven’t really done a huge amount of work yet (I am a relatively new researcher), but I found some nice things about how elephants in zoos sleep. They spend longer asleep if they have their pals with them, they sleep for longest periods of time between 10pm and 6am, and they prefer to lie down on sand than concrete. They might seem obvious things but actually no one had said it before so it was interesting to find out!

    • Photo: Carrie Ijichi

      Carrie Ijichi answered on 13 Mar 2017:

      That animals have personalities quite like humans and that they affect the way animals behave and how they cope with stress. Animals are really different to us but we still have a lot in common and both the differences and the similarities are important to appreciate

    • Photo: Cedric Tan

      Cedric Tan answered on 13 Mar 2017:

      The fascinating life about the clouded leopard, where it likes to live in and these information, it can help with authorities protecting the suitable habitat. Have a look at the recent video on this discovery:

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