• Question: do you ever work directly with animals?

    Asked by les science est tres cool to Kevin, Liz, Beccy, Rosie on 12 Jun 2017. This question was also asked by 545epdj32.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 12 Jun 2017:

      No – but I collaborate on studies that do. We have a study in which GPS collars were put on badgers (small collars) and cattle (large collars) to track where they go and when. There are also videos taken – using cameras that can record both during the day (for the cattle) and at night (for the badgers). I also collaborate on work looking at chicken flocks and how the individuals move around.

    • Photo: Liz Buckingham-Jeffery

      Liz Buckingham-Jeffery answered on 12 Jun 2017:

      I don’t work directly with animals myself. But I work with data that comes from animals. For example, I have been doing some work about controlling the disease Visceral Leishmaniasis (which we call VL for short) in Brazil.

      In Brazil, VL infects dogs and humans and it is spread by sandflies. I work with a biologist who goes to Brazil to collect data bout where the sandflies move and how much they are attracted to the different animals that they bite to spread the disease.

    • Photo: Rosie Fok

      Rosie Fok answered on 12 Jun 2017:

      No, although there was some work published about using dogs on hospital wards to sniff out an infection (called C. diff) and I always fancied having a sniffer dog on my ward rounds. Alas, we stick to the traditional method of testing patients’ poo samples in the lab instead.

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