• Question: Which were your 3 discoveries more important in your ages of science?

    Asked by Roberto1 to Carrie, Cedric, Ellen, Ines, Rupert on 14 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Ellen Williams

      Ellen Williams answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      I am a relatively new researcher so probably haven’t yet done as much as the other guys have but my two main projects that found out pretty cool stuff were:
      1. Identifying a means of assessing elephant welfare through looking at behaviour change over time – this has been put together into an assessment which can be carried out by elephant keepers and is currently in use across the UK and Ireland
      2. Identifying factors which affect rest behaviour in Asian elephants – these findings mean we can start to look at what elephants want/need to get a good nights sleep 🙂

    • Photo: Carrie Ijichi

      Carrie Ijichi answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      1) You can predict how a horse is likely to react based on just a questionnaire their owner fills in
      2) Personality affects how horses behave when they get hurt, just like in humans
      3) Personality might help explain why some animals don’t cope well in poor environments but others seem to manage

    • Photo: Cedric Tan

      Cedric Tan answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      Great question! I would say the following:

      1. How brothers can reduce the harm to females:

      2. How brotherly love can result in less fighting, yet the female chooses the non-brother

      3. What type of habitat does the clouded leopard prefer and how this finding can help us protect its suitable habitat:

    • Photo: Rupert Marshall

      Rupert Marshall answered on 15 Mar 2017:

      Discoveries in science are usually made in very small steps. But a small step up can help us see a long way ahead and this lets us have a good guess at how our small discovery changes our view of life on earth.

      My 3 favourite discoveries (and other people helped me find them all out) are:
      1) Birds sing at a higher pitch in noisy than quiet areas. I was amazed that all across Britain, common garden great tits sang in the same way: high in noise, low in quiet areas.
      2) Birds from noisy areas don’t respond as quickly to songs from quiet areas as they do to songs from noisy areas – and the same is true for birds from quiet areas. This made us wonder if we would end up with different species in noisy and quiet areas if song becomes a behavioural barrier to breeding.
      3) Nothing to do with birds! Fish (tropical guppies) in a group will follow the first fish to move. Usually this is the fish that knows where the local food can be fund – but not always. Acting boldy can make others follow you, even if you don’t know what you’re doing….

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