THESE 'EGGS' ARE SPYING ON WHOOPING CRANES Grus americanaTO BOOST SURVIVAL

摘要

Scientists are using fake eggs to spy on Whooping Cranes Grus americana in the hope of learning why some chicks die in the egg, while others hatch. Data gathered by the spy eggs could help biologists in Louisiana and Canada preserve the endangered long-legged birds, which have made a tenuous rebound after dwindling almost to extinction in the 1940s. "It's a fascinating way of spying on endangered species' reproduction in a way that allows us to assist in the recovery," said Dr. Axel Moehrenschlager,the Calgary Zoo's director of conservation and science. The Calgary Zoo lent eight of the spy eggs, more properly known as "data loggers," to Louisiana researchers. The Louisiana wildlife biologists swap the egg-shaped data loggers, which Moehrenschlager said are encased in a plastic polymer, for one of the two eggs that many cranes lay. The real eggs come to Audubon Nature Institute's Species Survival Center in New Orleans, where they're incubated until they're nearly ready to hatch...or not.