The Internet of Animals

Book excerpt: For readers of An Immense World, this thrilling book unveils a new scientific technology that tracks animal movements from space and ‘could fundamentally reshape the way we understand the role of mobility on our changing planet’. —The New York Times Animal senses are finely tuned to their environments. Rats are known to flee hours before an earthquake and birds to take flight before a tornado. Yet animal movements themselves are rarely glimpsed by humans, save for a flattened patch of grass here or a snapped twig there. What if we could track secret animal movements all over the world? What would they tell us about how our planet is changing? Would humans be more prepared for natural disasters and disease? Could we prevent further species loss and climate catastrophe? These questions are closer to being answered than ever before. As part of a groundbreaking new project called ICARUS, scientists all over the world have begun equipping animals with tracking devices that weigh less than 5 grams and are solar-powered. The data they collect feeds up to satellites and back to computers on the ground, creating a living map of animal behaviour previously thought impossible to obtain. In this page-turning book, the founder of ICARUS, Martin Wikelski, shares this compelling story for the first time. In witty, heartfelt prose, Wikelski reveals intimate and delightful insights into the behavior of animals, from lone foxes in the Arctic to wild elephants in Thailand. He describes the exciting process of getting his project off the ground, from securing funding from NASA to tagging animals himself in remote corners of the world. Finally, he reveals what his research means for our future. ICARUS may usher in a new epoch more hopeful than the Anthropocene — an epoch that Wikelski calls the Interspecies, when humans finally listen to animals and respond to what they have to say about the health of our world.