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Space Satellite to Track California Rats

by Terrence O'Brien on September 19, 2008 at 10:45 AM

Scientists Track Rats From Space
Imagine being the spy satellite operator who gets moved from tracking Osama duty to counting rats -- Giant Kangaroo Rats, to be specific. Scientists in California are using images from an Israeli defense satellite in order to count the number of Giant Kangaroo Rats still living in the California desert. The satellite images won't be able to actually reveal individual rats, but they will be able to see the species' large burrows surrounded with mounds of seeds.

Much of the Kangaroo Rat's habitat has been lost to farming in the San Joaquin Valley, where a canal has turned the desert landscape into a patchwork of farms. The shrinking habitat isn't just affecting the endangered giant rat either. The Kangaroo Rats are essential to the Californian ecosystem, explains Tim Bean, a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley. "Without them the entire ecosystem would go out of whack," he told CNN.

The satellite tracking will replace trapping and expensive airplane fly-overs. Still, the scientists have a tough job ahead of them -- we can't imagine that spotting the burrow of even a Giant Rat is all that easy from space. [From: CNN]

Tags: endangered, endangered species, EndangeredSpecies, giant kangaroo rat, giant kangaroo rats, GiantKangarooRat, GiantKangarooRats, nature, satellite, science

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