![]() This is the first time the technique has been tried in the wild. “We wanted to see if animals could be trained in the wild by controlling the numbers of predators so the native animals had a chance to learn without their population being wiped out. But these approaches rarely improve survival,” said Rebecca West, a scientist at UNSW. “Previous attempts to train animals to avoid predators have been carried out in laboratories or in captivity, with animals exposed to images, models or real predators. After realising that eliminating all feral cats and foxes was unrealistic, scientists from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and University of California Los Angeles wanted to stimulate learning and natural selection in native species.Īround 352 burrowing bettongs were introduced to a 26 square-km paddock, with four male feral cats, while another group of bettongs were kept in a paddock with no feral cats.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |