Odd Animal Behavior a Sign of Toxic Pollution

  • Odd animal behaviors have been noted in some birds, fish, and frogs. Researcher Ethan Clotfelter believes it may have something to do with exposure to toxic chemicals. (Photo by Sean Okihiro)

Toxic chemicals can sometimes be fatal to wildlife. Some researchers are now looking for more subtle signs of contamination. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush explains:

Transcript

Toxic chemicals can sometimes be fatal to wildlife. Some researchers are
now looking for more subtle signs of contamination. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Mark Brush explains:


Researchers are looking for birds that have a hard time standing up
straight, fish that are unusually aggressive, or frogs that seem a little
confused. These are signs that the animals might be affected by low-level toxic
contamination.


Ethan Clodfelter is a researcher at Amherst College. He studied data that looked at the behaviors of animals from all over the world. He says toxic chemicals that persist in the environment might explain why these animals are behaving oddly.


“What we really are trying to do is to come up with behavioral measures that
are good, sort of, early warning indicators. Because behaviors are very
highly variable kind of thing, and so you expect that even very small levels
of contaminants could induce changes in behavior long before you see six
legs growing out of frogs.”


Clodfelter says people, such as amateur bird watchers, have helped wildlife
officials identify odd animal behavior.


His review was published in the British research journal Animal Behavior.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Modified Fish to Protect Water Supplies?

Some scientists working on protecting freshwater supplies from terrorism are trying to recruit a new special agent. It’s a small fish that may serve as a sentinel of contamination. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Some scientists working on protecting freshwater supplies from
terrorism are trying to recruit a new special agent. It’s a small fish that
may serve as a sentinel of contamination. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Researchers are injecting firefly genes or a fluorescent
jellyfish protein into a small tropical freshwater species
called the zebrafish. The hope is that when the genetically
modified zebrafish is exposed to environmental pollutants or
chemical warfare agents, the fish would give off light or a green signal.


University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee scientist Michael Carvan says the
fish would be placed in water coming in from a source such as Lake Michigan.


“This would kind of be like the canary in the coal mine… where if the fish
signaled that there were toxic chemicals in the water… that that would alert
the system and probably shut down water that would go beyond that point.”


Carvan acknowledges that he’s having trouble getting the zebrafish to pass along
the so-called green gene from generation to generation.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Chuck Quirmbach in Milwaukee.