Inspiring the next generation of scientists
Student Spotlight - Kirsty Adaway
As they say... children are the future! That’s why I jumped at the chance to speak at a local primary school: Mersey Primary Academy's careers fair for their year 5 and 6 pupils in December. With the hopes of inspiring the next generation of scientists, I prepared a brief presentation outlining the most exciting parts of being a PhD student in the Psychology department at the University of Hull. This of course centred around the data collection methods used by me and the rest of the University’s British Carnivore Project team to collect data on wild red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) and other British carnivores for our ongoing research, and for my own thesis on the behavioural adaptability of foxes.
On the day of the careers fair, I started by giving my presentation to the students in year six. I began by explaining what a PhD student is, and what we do. Whilst briefly mentioning the meetings, conferences, reading, writing and data analysis, I swiftly moved onto explain how some PhD students conduct fieldwork to gather their scientific data, and went onto explain what this has looked like for me so far and the rest of the British Carnivore Project team. I was thrilled to see the interest shown on the pupils’ faces as I explained that we have given novel food-related tasks, or in this setting, “puzzles” filled with food to wild foxes all over the United Kingdom and used trail cameras to observe how they reacted to the objects that had randomly appeared within their environment.
Figure 1: Novel foraging tasks given to wild foxes in the United Kingdom as part of the British Carnivore Project.
On the presentation slides, I shared photos showing the different types of tasks we use (Figure 1), and how we set up the trail camera equipment. I also shared some photos I had taken whilst conducting fieldwork, including the spectacular views of Loch Ness and Loch Lomond from my recent field trips to Scotland, and the beautiful cabin in which I had stayed in during one of these trips. These were met with open mouths and gasps from the clearly-interested students.
I was then pleasantly surprised as a number of pupils raised their hands and began to ask a series of insightful and interesting questions. When asked whether we see any other species on the video footage, we had a short discussion about the array of species that commonly, and not so commonly, make an appearance around the tasks, and the different locations in which they are often seen. I also took this as an opportunity to tell them a story about a red squirrel I was recently thrilled to have seen in Scotland!
One caring pupil showed concern for smaller species asked whether species such as mice had ever become trapped in one the puzzle boxes, to which I assured her that they had not. I was then met with a very insightful question on whether I thought there were any differences in how foxes from different areas had reacted to the puzzles, which led on nicely to the next part of my talk.
Upon asking the students whether they thought many foxes had solved the puzzles and eaten the food contained inside, I was met with a room full of yeses and nods. I then played some of the trail camera footage showing some of the different reactions foxes had to the tasks. These included instances where foxes appeared to want to approach and interact with the tasks but wasn’t quite brave enough, often jumping back after stretching too close - which of course got many laughs from the students. I mentioned how foxes at only 31 out of 104 field sites touched the tasks during the two-week period that they were left in the field. I then explained how we had found that foxes in urban areas were more likely to touch the tasks than foxes in rural areas. A few students wisely suggested here that this could be because urban foxes are more likely to come across random objects like our tasks, which were brilliant suggestions. To finish, I explained that despite urban foxes being more likely to touch the tasks, we had found that they were still no likely to solve them, and how only 12 of the foxes that did touch them pursued long enough to gain entry to the food. Of course, I then ended by playing a sample of those videos which was met with smiles and cheers.
Upon finishing our discussion in year 6, I moved onto the year 5 pupils’ class where a room full of new faces eagerly awaited their next careers talk and began to repeat my presentation to a room of slightly younger but just-as-interested students. Again, I was blown away by the insightful questions I was asked in this class, including whether I had ever seen two different species on the camera at the same time, and why we did not put food around the outside of the puzzles so the foxes would know that there was more food inside. In fact, this question was very insightful, as this is something we had done to attract foxes to engage with the tasks. I was also corrected by one bright student who subtly corrected an earlier comment I had made about why we use trail cameras to monitor foxes, especially since they are most active at nighttime. One of the videos from the trail camera footage I had shown of a fox solving a task was recorded in the daytime and this didn’t go unnoticed - very observant!
After finishing my presentation, I was asked by another bright pupil whether it was possible that the urban foxes in our study were more likely to touch the tasks than rural foxes as they were more familiar with the type of food we had placed inside. I highlighted what a brilliant question that was and began to discuss some food preference tests we had conducted on foxes from different areas, where I explained how all of the foxes ate the food when the tasks were absent, showing urban and rural foxes were equally likely to eat the food.
I left the school overly impressed with how knowledgeable and free-thinking the students were. I hoped I had managed to convince at least some of the pupils that science is an amazing subject with so very many different interesting fields, such as animal behaviour and wildlife conservation. Indeed, one thing that is definitely apparent is that the students at Mersey Primary Academy have a bright future whatever career path they choose to take.
If you are interested in learning more about my PhD research or any of the other exciting activities by the British Carnivore Project, feel free to follow me on Twitter @KristyAnna9 for updates! You can also read more about the British Carnivore Project’s most recent publication on urban fox boldness.
Kirsty carried out reserach with the University of Hull and British Carnivore Project
Email: K.A.ADAWAY-2021@hull.ac.uk
Twitter: @KristyAnna9