Robo-Badger Shows How Weird Wildlife Biology Can Get
Making a cameo in a Mad Max Saga Soon
This is a script for a Tik Tok and Reel I posted, links below to see accompanying imagery
Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRKSfdwb/
Instagram:
Hey for your daily dose of nightmare fuel, I present to you robo-badger. And it’s a perfect example of how weird wildlife management can get.
Let’s backtrack a bit. I’ve talked before about black-footed ferrets, but the very quick run-down is that they were thought to be extinct, a very good dog found one, the last colony on earth was found and from there a captive breeding program was begun. In the intervening years black-footed ferrets have become the poster fur baby for the concept of rewilding; AKA reintroducing species to their native habitat where they haven’t existed for some time.
One of the trickiest parts of rewilding is taking wild animals that are born in zoos or other captive breeding facilities and then introducing them into an environment they don’t have the skills to navigate. Unsurprisingly the first batch of reintroduced ferrets did very poorly. Which is what led to the creation of Colorado’s National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center. Also known as black-footed ferret boot camp. These furry, feeted baby shai-hulud’s need preconditioning.
Ferrets are observed in the pens with these burrow systems installed to see if they’ve got what it takes to make it in the real world. Real prairie dogs are released in the pens and ferrets try to hunt them. They also get exposed to weather, bugs, and curious raptors and owls above the netted ceiling. In 30 days or so biologists get a good sense of whether they’re ready for reintroduction or if they’ll spend their days delighting children (in this case I am children) with their wiggly little running and wrassling style.
Where does robo-badger come in? Well, in the early days of the experiment, researchers didn’t have enough black-footed ferrets to actually test their theories. So they imported some russian pole-cats and tried to teach them to hunt, and to be afraid of predators. One idea was to attach a badger carcass to a remote-controlled truck toy and chase the pole-cats around the pen. It was pretty slow and didn’t behave like a predator, so the pole-cats ignored it. I like this example because it both shows how out-of-the-box biologist thinking can be, and also how gross. It’s perfect.
Mad Max-style abominations aside, BFF Boot Camp has been a big success. Biologists have found that ferrets who graduate from the Conservation Center are ten times more likely to succeed in the wild.
We still have a lot of work to do. Because BFFs experienced such a severe bottleneck event and as you see in the post in the caption, their genetic diversity is in rough shape. They need more habitat and prairie dogs. And perhaps worst of all, they are still at extreme risk of the sylvatic plague.
But like Furiosa learning the to drive the War Rig from Praetorian Jack, biologists never stop learning. Even when it gets a little weird out there.