• Question: what has been your favourite investigation so far?

    Asked by ilish to Joanna, Vincent on 17 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by 233ecyf25.
    • Photo: Joanna Bagniewska

      Joanna Bagniewska answered on 17 Jun 2016:

      My favourite one was my study in South Africa, where I was trying to figure out whether we can use the counts of animal tracks to find out which study site has the most jackals, cape foxes and bat-eared foxes. We had to sweep a lot of sand to make sure it’s even – so that we could see tracks clearly – and we used a cotton pad with a very strange bait: the yummy smell of artificial rotten egg. We could not use a real rotten egg, because the first animal to show up would eat it – we had to make sure that the stuff smelled “good”, but did not taste it. I got to see a lot of exciting animals during that study – apart from the jackals and foxes, also mongooses, hyenas and baboons. I learned that tracks can tell a whole story, not just which animal they belong to. And it turned out that yes, you can use the tracks to figure out which site has more jackals!

    • Photo: Vincent Keenan

      Vincent Keenan answered on 21 Jun 2016:

      My favourite investigation must be my most recent one where I investigated biological invasions. It was the first inestigation I have conducted with light supervision, so I made lots of mistakes and it was slow. It’s my favourite because of how much I learned, not so much with what I was studying, but how I was studying. I learned useful ways to efficient with code, and to recognise different patterns within the maths I was doing. I also learned to write better (although this might no be apparent from my answers :P)

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