Tom Hart on Antarctic wildlife and the power of penguin poo
Ecologist Tom Hart on pioneering remote monitoring at scale to track patterns in remote wildlife populations - and why Macaronis are the meanest penguins...
How do you keep tabs on millions of penguins in the most remote places on Earth, when there's nobody there to do the watching?
Tom Hart is a Professor of Conservation and Ecology at Oxford Brookes University and self-described "penguinologist". He's pioneered the use of remote camera networks, drones and AI to monitor Antarctica's wildlife on an unprecedented scale. He's also a founder of the award-winning Penguin Watch citizen science project, which has harnessed the power of thousands of volunteers around to world, to help with analysing this data - the results of which are helping scientists to understand how penguins are responding to the rapidly changing world…
Tom tells Professor Jim Al-Khalili about how he first "caught Antarctica", hitchhiking on tourist cruises and why it's worth paying attention to penguin poo.
Presented by Jim Al-Khalili
Produced by Lucy Taylor
A BBC Studios production
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- Tue 20 Oct 202609:00BBC Radio 4
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The Life Scientific
Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work.
