18-04-2025
BU students host wildlife scavenger hunt at Ross Park Zoo
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (WIVT/WBGH) – BU students were at the Ross Park Zoo today, hoping to inspire young scientists with a wildlife scavenger hunt.
Today's event was part of BioBlitz, which is when people document all of the wildlife in a particular area. Zoo-goers were encouraged to download an app called iNaturalist, and throughout their time at the zoo, take photos of any plants, critters, or wild animals, which are then uploaded to a database to be used by researchers around the world.
One grad student, Aly Milks says the data is used to study large-scale environmental change from migrations, to bloom times.
'A lot of iNaturalist is used by scientists to find locations of where some species are that might have not been previously identified. Or, if they want to do research, they can see that there's a particular species in an area. Go out and do research on it,' Milks said.
Today's event at the zoo was just the precursor to tomorrow's data collection taking place from 10 to 3 p.m. at the university nature preserve, in Lot-M. She says they'll be using iNaturalist at the zoo and the nature preserve through May 11th.
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