IN SEPTEMBER 2020, a blackbird flew 1530 kilometres from Belarus to Albania. As avian migrations go, it wasn鈥檛 that impressive. But this journey was tracked from the International Space Station, setting in motion an ambitious project that could solve some of the biggest mysteries in animal behaviour, from how crop-eating plagues of locusts form to whether some animals possess a sixth sense to predict natural disasters.
ICARUS, International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space, is the brainchild of Martin Wikelski, a director at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany. His idea, conceived two decades ago, is to create what he calls an 鈥渋nternet of animals鈥� by fitting 100,000 creatures with . It took a while to win the support of German and Russian space agencies and bring together a global group of collaborators, but, since that first blackbird flight, hundreds of animals have been fitted with custom-made tags weighing just 5 grams. These don鈥檛 just monitor their location, they also log aspects of behaviour and physiology. A menagerie of birds, bats, goats, rhinos, tortoises and more has been sending signals to the ISS as well as Earth-based receivers. The information gathered is freely available to all. And increasing numbers of grassroots animal taggers are getting involved in ICARUS.
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As the project grows, so do Wikelski鈥檚 ambitions. He believes that, as well as shedding new light on animal behaviour, the internet of animals can also help us forecast environmental change, track emerging diseases, conserve endangered species and make humans more responsive to the needs of other creatures.
Matthew Ponsford: To drum up interest in ICARUS, you published . Which in particular would you like to solve?
Martin Wikelski: There are hundreds, but one we want to start with is where do European eels go to reproduce? Are they really going to the Sargasso Sea and, if so, where exactly? This is all a big mystery. Another is what are the causes of death in European storks? We鈥檙e planning to tag 15,000 storks a year to understand why about 70 per cent die in their first year. Where are they? I mean, if you imagine the pile of 10,000 dead storks, that鈥檚 a hell of a lot. But nobody sees them die out in the wild. Also, we have massive declines in songbirds: , their numbers are down by about 600 million, , it鈥檚 3 billion birds missing. Where did they get lost? Nobody knows.
What kinds of things have you observed with ICARUS so far?
Every time we look, we see something completely unexpected and new. People only know on average what animals are doing, but no animal is average. They all do really interesting and crazy things. So we have white storks flying over the Sahara five times a season. We have cuckoos going from Kamchatka [in Russia鈥檚 far east] through India to Angola and back. We have sooty terns from the Seychelles going all the way to eastern India and Sri Lanka. For us, every day is super exciting.
Other groups are watching animals from space. What does ICARUS do that鈥檚 new?
It can track smaller animals, it can track more animals, and it can track their behaviour through sensors. We record temperature, acceleration, humidity, magnetometry, pressure 鈥� the kind of environmental sensing that the other satellite trackers don鈥檛 have. We can track wing beats in birds, energy expenditure, foraging behaviour and see when they are excited or stressed.
Why do you call this the 鈥渋nternet of animals鈥�?
This internet is, in principle, the collective of the animals, because they constantly interact with each other. It鈥檚 really what you could call swarm intelligence. We are combining the terrestrial Internet of Things (IoT) with a space-based IoT. So, if an animal is close enough to connect to an Earth-based data station, then it communicates terrestrially. If it鈥檚 away from these areas 鈥� if it is killed in a valley in the rainforest, if it dies over the Sahara, or whatever 鈥� then you need the satellite IoT to send and receive that information.
The interesting part is that we now know that collective behaviour is basically responsible for the 鈥渟ixth sense鈥� of animals. In the old days, people saw this as something metaphysical or crazy. But we know from physics and chemistry that, where there are interacting parts, new properties emerge. This is what you have in animals as well. With intelligent sensors that interact, you get emergent new properties that aren鈥檛 visible on the lower level. That鈥檚 what we can tap into. For example, we have some early indications that animals can sense upcoming disasters like earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.
How can you put such long-held folk beliefs to the test?
The key is to work with local people who understand the animals. It鈥檚 almost like a good dog handler 鈥� if you have a good person, they can search for drugs at customs. Not everybody can do that. But it works if you ask those people: 鈥榃hat kinds of signs are you looking for? How can the dog tell you?鈥� That鈥檚 exactly how we start with disasters. We try to get a read-out of this black box, this sixth sense of animals, this interaction of intelligent sensors.
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We鈥檙e doing this now at Mount Etna in Sicily, Italy. We have goats running around, and whenever we see the goats do something crazy 鈥� it happens every few weeks or so 鈥� we predict that something is happening with the volcano. And in most cases, we are right.
We did an internal evaluation of our predictions and it was pretty powerful. We aren鈥檛 yet at an early warning system, but we are getting towards these systems. And then we can go further and ask what kind of environmental features the animals could tune into. That鈥檚 so far pretty much unknown. It isn鈥檛 seismic information because that鈥檚 easy to measure, so it must be something else.
Could animal networks also help with more mainstream predictions, such as weather forecasting?
Yes, many systems are really ripe for animal predictions. For example, the gannets and the shorebirds in the western part of Mexico 鈥� they tell you in spring how the harvest of anchovies and other fish will be in the fall, because they are already tuning in to the fry production early in the season. Or boobies in the Indo Pacific will tell you how strong the next El Ni帽o will be because 鈥� months ahead of time 鈥� they all give up their breeding schedules. They either abandon the eggs or they don鈥檛 even lay eggs. And then you know it will be a strong El Ni帽o. We already have those kinds of long-term predictions, but we have not brought them together yet on a global scale. And that goes back to the internet of animals. That is what鈥檚 coming.
Will ICARUS also allow you to predict the spread of emerging and endemic diseases?
Again, yes. We already have ducks in China with tags that record body temperature, which can tell you about the next avian influenza: where that is and whether it鈥檚 an important outbreak. With flying foxes in Africa, you can take a blood sample and see if an animal has encountered diseases like Ebola. Then ICARUS is almost like a coronavirus-tracking app: you know where these animals have been, and if all the ones with Ebola antibodies have been in eastern Congo, you know that鈥檚 the place where they picked up the disease.
How can the internet of animals help with conservation?
One thing we鈥檙e doing now is looking at how other species can help us protect animals like the rhino. In many areas of the world, corrupt rangers are working with the guys that poach rhinos. Now, we can tag the animals around them 鈥� zebras, giraffes, wildebeests, lions, wild dogs and so on 鈥� and they tell us there鈥檚 something bad happening.
We are also using heart-rate loggers in blackbirds, which give a measure of stress and energy use. We want to know how expensive it is to migrate, whether it is better to stay at home or migrate. Maybe for a blackbird that鈥檚 not so important, but it is for an endangered species 鈥� for shorebirds, a sea turtle or a big fruit bat in Africa. It helps us understand which habitats they need. We can also dynamically guard them. If, for example, we see that shorebirds, which in the old days flew directly from Mauritania to the Netherlands, now, with climate change, can鈥檛 get enough food in Mauritania and have to land in France, we can say: 鈥淐lose the beaches for three days until they recuperate.鈥� Such dynamic interactions between animals and humans are really only possible if you have animals communicating with you through these tags.
Your free online database, , allows anyone to track individual animals and get a sense of their lives and dramas. How can this help in conservation efforts?
If you say that we have lost 3 billion songbirds, nobody cares. But if we have lost Fritz and Franz and Helga somewhere between North America and South America, and there are school classes following those animals and knowing their fates and knowing them individually, it makes a total difference in conservation.
The other aspect is that people are learning the good that animals bring us. Take fruit bats in Africa: they are super important in many areas for replanting trees because they fly over open areas and spit down seeds.
What does the future hold?
We want to track the Portuguese man-o-war, a really poisonous, jellyfish-like creature. And we are working on a new, improved version of ICARUS. It will include very small tags 鈥� 500 milligrams 鈥� that will go on desert locusts. So, tracking the locust plague.
But the nice thing is, this is a bottom-up movement. It isn鈥檛 directed by somebody. Every day we get requests from people around the world saying: 鈥淗ey, we want to understand our animals 鈥� give us tools to do that.鈥� Everybody wants to do that, they just don鈥檛 have the means to do it yet. It鈥檚 almost like giving people a microscope, or a telescope to see the stars.
