Sounds of recovery: AI helps monitor wildlife during forest restoration

In this episode: 00:47 An automated way to monitor wildlife recovery To prevent the loss of wildlife, forest restoration is key, but monitoring how well biodiversity actually recovers is incredibly difficult. Now though, a team have collected recordings of animal sounds to determine the extent of the recovery. However, while using these sounds to identify species is an effective way to monitor, it’s also labour intensive. To overcome this, they trained an AI to listen to the sounds, and found that although it was less able to identify species, its findings still correlated well with wildlife recovery, suggesting that it could be a cost-effective and automated way to monitor biodiversity. Research article: Müller et al. 12:30 Research Highlights Researchers develop algae-based living materials that glow when squeezed, and a 50-million-year-old bat skull that suggests echolocation was an ancient skill. Research High