From New Scientist

Lex_Diamonds

Some may find this marginally funny:

Rats go bats down by the canal

10:27 06 July 01
Max Glaskin

Bats that go swimming and voles that fly sound like nature gone mad. But
that's the mystery which confronted researchers tracking mammals in the
English countryside.

Katie Parsons of Bristol University was following Daubenton's bats tagged
with radio transmitters along the Kennet and Avon Canal in Somerset.

"They fly swiftly over a stretch of water, taking insects from the surface
with their feet," she says. "But one night the signals showed a bat moving
at water level, very slowly. And it was gradually joined by others."

Researchers from Oxford University's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit
also faced a similar enigma. They were out monitoring relocated water voles
on the same stretch of water when their equipment suddenly revealed a number
of voles flying over hedges and trees at speeds up to 10 kilometres an hour.

A chance meeting solved the mystery. Parsons got talking to an undergraduate
who told her about the Oxford group. By coincidence both teams had been
using tags that broadcast on the same frequencies. The bat hunters had been
following voles and the vole experts tracking bats. "I unwittingly started
following Ratties rather than Batties," Parsons says.

"We discussed the possibilities of having a central register for wildlife
transmitters so that this kind of thing doesn't happen again," she says.
"The chances of two groups working in the same area at the same time with
the same frequencies are very small but it's a shock when it happens."

Britain's Mammal Society says it may now publish the radio frequencies
researchers plan to use on its annual list of current projects, to avoid the
confusion happening again.


10:27 06 July 01

Steven

Now there's something that's open to abuse!

[Jackass]

Hehehehe, nice one

[This message has been edited by [Jackass] (edited 06-07-2001).]