The Internet of Animals
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Future Proof with Jonathan McRae.
Proudly supported by Research Ireland. On Newstalk.
Hello and welcome to Future Proof, the podcast. This is the show where we take a closer look at the world around us. I'm Jonathan McRae. Thank you for subscribing, downloading and rating. We really appreciate it. Doing something slightly different this week. There's no news round, but we're going to bring you two really interesting features. One incredible piece of work by the Max Plaque Institute of Animals Research. They're connecting satellites with animals to try and understand why. where animals and birds are going. And we're also going to talk about Huntington's disease and where we are with cures for this horrific degenerative condition. If you'd like to get in touch with the program, you can email us, scienceatnewstalk.com.
We get to all of your comments at the end of the show. So first up, if you own a smartwatch or a fitness tracker, you'll know that they teach you all sorts of interesting things about your behaviors and patterns. Some of them not necessarily things you want to hear, but they're probably important to know. What if we could do this with animals and understand what it is they're doing and where they're going? This is the basic concept behind the Icarus Project. Martin Michelski is the director at Max Plant Institute of Animal Behavior and the man behind the project. He joins me now. Welcome to the program, Martin. The idea that we want to monitor animals, but actually it's quite difficult to do so. This isn't new, right?
The idea that if we want to see animals in the wild, it's difficult to do that if they live in the wild.
Yes, so the idea has been around since the 60s, but it's really been difficult to do. especially on a global scale. And now we have new technology analyzing the behavior of animals on board, AI on these little wearables, and then only sending the summary of what they're doing. And that's really exciting.
So talk to me about the ICRIS project. What exactly are you doing?
Well, we have launched a satellite. Actually, two are now up in orbit and are being commissioned to track very small tracking tags, variables on the ground anywhere on the globe. And that is a bottom-up community-based system where we as a science community have launched these satellite systems and are now starting to work on species that are roaming our planet and really get this information and develop this into a new Earth observation system.
So the two parts of this I find really interesting. The first are the satellites. Who owns these satellites and who launched them into space?
So they are owned actually by the Max Planck Society and the second one is half owned by National Geographic Society. So we teamed up with them, our colleagues here, and we launched it with SpaceX because that's the easiest, the quickest, the safest for now. But there are more launchers becoming online, small launchers for low Earth orbit in the near future.
That's really, really cool. So you have your own satellites in space tracking the movement of animals, but only the ones that are wearing these tags that you've put on them on the ground. Is that right?
Yes, that's correct, because you need a special communication system. You can imagine this is complicated. It's actually the highest communication engineering that you can get. We only need seven milliwatts to get the information up. It's 30 decibel below noise, below background noise. So it's a very nifty system.
How does it work? You attach an electronic tag to an animal and then it beams up. Is it low energy Bluetooth or something like that?
It's similar to that. It's exactly like that. So the animal has a tag. It either has a battery or it has a solar panel of both to run forever. And then it is very energy efficient. It only sends the information maybe once a day or every few hours, depending. And then only very little information.
What is the Icarus Project and how can satellites track wild animals?
So it analyzes the behavior of the animal on board, on the tag, and then sends the summary to the satellite when the satellite is overhead.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–3:59
2
What is the Icarus Project and how can satellites track wild animals?
3:59–12:17
3
Who launched and owns the Icarus satellites and how were they deployed?
12:17–18:03
4
How do energy‑efficient animal tags work and what data do they send?
18:03–22:14
5
How small are the tracking tags and which species can they monitor?
22:14–33:44