The ‘Internet of Animals’ Could Transform What We Know About Wildlife
Back in 2001, sitting on a porch one evening in Panama, the German ornithologist had the germ of an idea for an “internet of animals,” a global system of sensor-wearing wildlife that would reveal the planet’s elusive, nonhuman worlds. He figured he could get it up and running by 2005. Nearly 20 years later, Wikelski may have finally succeeded — after surmounting roadblocks that range from bureaucratic mishaps to technical glitches to a geopolitical crisis. His space-based system, known as ICARUS (International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space), is now scheduled to launch, in its latest, satellite-based incarnation, on a private rocket sometime in 2025.
The underlying idea of the internet of animals is to tune into the planet’s hidden phenomena — the flight paths followed by sharp-shinned hawks, the precise fates befalling Arctic terns that die young, the exact landscape requirements of critically endangered saiga antelope — by attaching tiny, solar-powered tracking devices
