{"id":21305,"date":"2020-01-08T07:48:54","date_gmt":"2020-01-08T15:48:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heuermontage.com\/?p=21305"},"modified":"2020-01-08T07:49:01","modified_gmt":"2020-01-08T15:49:01","slug":"migration-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heuermontage.com\/?p=21305","title":{"rendered":"Migration (2)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yesterday I introduced the happy sloths of Panama. Today, let’s turn to happy cows. Doing whatever cows do in the Bavarian country side, they were unperturbed when a flock of large, strange white birds descended, alit on their backs and began nit-picking bovine fleece. Maybe there is something stronger than alkaloid compounds in the Bavarian water. In any case, it was enough of a strange sight that a young birder-in-training rushed to the relevant experts trying to find out what on earth had just happened. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It was a flock of unfamiliar cattle egrets who had made a wrong turn during their migration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Some decades later, our observant youngster Martin Wikelski <\/a>has become the director of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell, Germany, after teaching stints that included years at Princeton. He is still interested in birds, and now in general migration patterns as indicators of disease spread, disaster detection, and global change. He is spearheading ICARUS, <\/a>(International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space) a program connected to the International Space Station as a tracking site for interacting animal migrations, installed last summer. (Equally impressive, in my book, is of course the fact that this guy lists adventurer<\/em> in first place on his CV, scientific grandeur notwithstanding.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He stuck with birds, but cows have not disappeared either. They are currently part of a research program that has fitted sensor-studded radio transmitters in quake-prone regions around the world to various birds and mammals, trying to pick up earthquake warnings from changes in the animals behavior and physiology (a controversial project<\/a>, one might add, with geologists not convinced that animal behavior changes around the timing of an earth quake. But that will be obviously explored now.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What do we know about migration, though? Take one short minute and check out this video, which shows you the flow of movement across the globe. It is astounding. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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