Answers to my questions and the challenge

Answers to question one: Why is it so important to study feces?



Studying feces helps us:

• to know what types of animals are in the area.
• to see how many of each type of animal is in an area (there is a mathematical equation to follow to determine about how many animals are in an area based on the amount of feces you find).
• to determine if the animals are healthy.
• to see what the animals are eating (are they following normal eating patterns or are they eating things that they normally wouldn't).
• to see if a new animal has entered the habitat.
• David (in Mrs. Owen's class) mentioned a DNA test and actually scientists can use DNA tests to determine a lot about the feces or hair samples that they find.

Answers to question two: Why do we study mice and voles and how does it help us to learn about climate change?


This is a photo of a vole.


This is a photo of a mouse.

Studying mice and voles is important and it helps us to learn about climate change because:

• they are small mammals, which means they are easy to trap.
• the mice and voles are OK with being trapped (some larger animals will actually hurt themselves if they get caught in a trap).
• mice and voles are at the bottom of the food chain (which means they are eaten by a lot of other animals) and so the absence or abundance of them tells us a lot about the other animals in the area.
• if the population changes greatly in a year it could also make a scientist look at the vegetation in the area to see what has changed and why.
  

Great job thinking about the trap challenge. You are all correct, it was definitely an animal larger than a mouse or vole. We have decided that the animal that took my traps apart was probably a raccoon. The reason that we think it was a raccoon is because we found one of the traps down by the water and a nickname for the raccoon in Germany is the washer bear. The reason that people call raccoons that is because most raccoons take their food to the water to wash it before they eat it. Since we found my trap by the water this makes us think that it was probably a raccoon.