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Technician in the field using radio telemetry. Photo credit: Cape Leopard Trust

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You won't believe what this video reveals about when you get close to Penguins. It also talks about the importance of using radio telemetry on these cute aquatic flightless birds.

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national oceanic and atmospheric administration

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Chinstrap penguins may be cute, but get too close and your endearing perception of these birds may be tested, given their penchant for projectile pooping and beating each other up.

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Photo Credit: Ol Pejeta

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Photo Credit: Washington State University

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Read this blog which has great pictures of how radio telemetry is helping tortoise research.

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Did you know that perched atop the highest point of Highlands County, Florida, there lives a well-studied colony of Gopher Tortoises? Twice a week, an Archbold biologist locates 18 adult tortoises that are part of a study on the movements and social behaviors of this threatened species. But how does she find 18 tortoises in a field the size of a baseball diamond? Keep on reading to find out!

On a hot and sunny afternoon, I rode with Becca Tucker, research assistant in Archbold's Herpetology Program, to Red Hill, the highest point in Highlands County. After parking, Becca pulled out a notebook, a high-tech GPS, a box-shaped gadget, and a tool that looked like an old TV antenna. Once the antenna was plugged into the box gadget, the box started beeping. Becca pointed the antenna in different directions, and then walked off into the scrub. After stopping a couple of times to swing the antenna around again, we had arrived at a burrow with a Gopher Tortoise in it! How did we do this? At Archbold, we use radio telemetry.

Let me explain what each of these gadgets do. The antenna thing is really a radio antenna. Like a car antenna, it detects radio waves, and sends them to a receiver (the black box in Becca's left hand), which plays back the radio signal. Just like a car radio, you can use this receiver to pick a specific radio frequency to listen for. But how do radio waves tell us where tortoises are? See that gadget below?

That's a radio tag. It emits a radio signal at a specific frequency, just like a radio station. But instead of playing music, it only sends out beeps, which our antenna detects and the receiver plays back. These beeps sound loudest when the antenna is pointing exactly at the tag. This is how we know which direction the tortoise is. (See below for note on Archbold's authorization to handle Gopher Tortoises)

Lots of biologists put radio tags on all sorts of animals to find them in a process called radio telemetry. Because each radio tag has a unique frequency, you can put tags on many animals, keep a list of these frequencies, and then go into the field searching for each tag one at a time. And so, walking around the scrub while swinging a big metal antenna, Becca and I went about finding tortoises on Red Hill.

Despite the nice weather, all but one tortoise were inside their burrows. We figured this out by being led to their burrows with telemetry, and after seeing no tortoise, pointing the antenna at the ground.

Fortunately, Becca was able to coax some shy tortoises out of their burrows to confirm their identity and take photos.

Once we pinpointed a tortoise's location, Becca held the GPS unit directly above it and saved the location. She collected notes about the habitat, and then dialed in the next radio tag frequency.

After about two hours of listening to beeps, walking through bushes, and writing down numbers, we had located all 18 tortoises. But why go through all this effort?
"This is part of a collaborative research project between researchers at Archbold, University of Georgia, and Cornell University. We are using a variety of techniques (radio telemetry, monitoring with motion-sensor cameras, genetics analyses) to investigate the complex social lives and mating system of Gopher Tortoises. Specifically, we are trying to determine how size, age, and relatedness (i.e., kindship) affect their social interactions, such as males courting females, aggressive encounters, or burrow sharing." -Dr. Betsie Rothermel, Director of the Archbold Herpetology Program
To learn more about Gopher Tortoises and how you can help them, you can check out

1. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Gopher Tortoise webpage

2. The Gopher Tortoise Council website

3. A video that Archbold herpetology interns made

Note: Archbold's handling of Gopher Tortoises is authorized by a scientific collecting permit from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Great care is taken to prevent injury and minimize stress to the animals we study.

Written and photographed by Evan Barrientos- Environmental Education Intern at Archbold Biological Station.

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Did you know that perched atop the highest point of Highlands County, Florida, there lives a well-studied colony of Gopher Tortoises? Twice a week, an Archbold biologist locates 18 adult tortoises that are part of a study on the movements and social behaviors of this threatened species.

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Home range sizes

Daily movements

Local distributions of species

Migration paths

Behavioral data

Dietary information

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Scientists put the radio telemetry technology on all different ways because each wildlife has a set of unique circumstances. Watch this video below to see how it is placed on Coypu (also known as Nutria).

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Using Radio Telemetry to Track Nutria Movement

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To learn more about how this technology works watching this video below.

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Radio Telemetry in Ten Minutes || Tracking a Spotted Skunk || Kristen's WildLife

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With all the positives of using radio telemetry to track wildlife scientists should consider this other perspective. The data could be hacked to be used to harm wildlife as well. Read More

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Hackers have infiltrated government websites, invaded corporate databases, and may have even helped to sway the results of the U.S. presidential election. Now researchers warn that cyber criminals might set their sights on another target: animal tracking data.

Scientists have long used radio signals to follow tagged animals, glean valuable insights into their behavior, and in some cases protect them from exploitation. In recent years advances in technology have made it possible to pinpoint a creature's exact location using the steady pings from satellites.

Researchers in South Africa, for instance, have implanted GPS trackers in the horns of rhinos so that they can help save them from poachers who target the rare animals. The devices set off an alarm if an animal's movements seem uncharacteristic and rapid.

But the very information collected to better safeguard animals could be misused by poachers, says Steven Cooke, a biology professor at Ottawa's Carleton University who has tracked the location of fish for research projects.

"Being able to put on a map exactly where animals are in space in time, that's what one needs to exploit them," says Cooke, also the lead author of a recent paper published in the journal Conservation Biology.

It's hard to quantify how often hackers have actually tried to access this type of information. The paper points to one example from 2013 in which a failed attempt was made to retrieve the location of an endangered Bengal tiger at the Panna Tiger Reserve in central India. The head of a tiger monitoring program, Krishnamurthy Ramesh, received an email that alerted him to an attempt to access his professional email account, which held the location of the rare cat. The incident prompted the program's managers to deploy drones for surveillance and set up wireless sensors to detect human intrusions into the forest.

"The biggest concern is that we as a scientific community haven't fully thought through the consequences of collecting this kind of data," Cooke says.

Hacking is just one example of how people could abuse the system, according to the paper's authors. They also fear that information voluntarily shared by scientists could be misused to kill animals and that non-researchers may use animals' tags, the instruments that record their location, for their own benefit.

That happened last year, when park officials suspected that photographers visiting national parks in Canada were using VHF receivers to pick up radio signals to find collared bears, wolves, and elk. That incident, which first drew Cooke's attention to abuses of wildlife tracking tools, prompted the park service to eventually ban the devices in three national parks. It cited the need to "prevent disturbance, harassment and habituation of wildlife."

The authors point to another example of potential misuse, in Western Australia. The state's Department of Fisheries granted researchers permission to tag white sharks to study their spatial ecology and act as a warning system to predict if sharks were swimming too close to beaches. The agency later authorized the killing of a tagged shark, saying it posed an "imminent threat" to beachgoers. Scientists claimed that the animal wasn't a danger and that the agency located the animal using data from its tag.

"Tagging provides an early warning system, and by killing that shark you are killing the early warning system," shark policy expert Christopher Neff told the Guardian at the time. "It's a step backwards for science and for beach safety."

Cooke says he sees a tension between the need to protect sensitive information and scientists' desire to be transparent in an era that values openness.

"We're trying to get the public excited and share what we do, get them supportive of science and conservation," he says. "And at the same time we're giving a segment of that broader public the ability to do harm. Having a conversation about this is step number one."

Matt Hayward, an ecologist at Bangor University in the U.K, says scientists should think twice about disclosing a rare animal's location as soon as they know it-but that it's probably okay if the information is shared later. "The animals don't tend to year after year stay in the same area," says Hayward, who has tracked lions in South Africa and wombats in Australia.

As for the prospect of hacking, "I hadn't considered it before," he says.

Read more stories about wildlife crime and exploitation on Wildlife Watch. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas tongwildlife@natgeo.com.

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Tracking Wildlife for Science Could Actually Help Poachers

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Hackers have infiltrated government websites, invaded corporate databases, and may have even helped to sway the results of the U.S. presidential election. Now researchers warn that cyber criminals might set their sights on another target: animal tracking data. Scientists have long used radio signals to follow tagged animals, glean valuable insights into their behavior, and in some cases protect them from exploitation.

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Watch scientists test out the first radio telemetry on such a small creature.

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Watch: Monarch Butterflies Get Tiny Radio Trackers

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National Geographic grantee Martin Wikelski tries to put electronic tags on free-flying monarch butterflies for the first time ever in order to track their remarkable migration.

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Why do we still use Very High Frequency (VHF) Radio Telemetry? 

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Why do we still use Very High Frequency (VHF) Radio Telemetry? 

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It is a well tested technique

It can be used on animals of many sizes

It is a relatively low cost

There are a number of analysis techniques already developed to work with telemetry data.

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Five tips on how to use radio telemetry when in the field.

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Top Radio Telemetry Tips in 5 Minutes || Kristen's WildLife

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                                                                                                                     Citations

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                                                                                                                     Citations

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Actman, J. 2017, March 10. Tracking Wildlife for Science Could Actually Help Poachers. Retrieved from https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/03/wildlife-watch-gps-data-hacking-poaching-wildlife/

Barrientos, E. 2014 December 5. Tortoise Tracking. Retrieved from https://archboldedublog.org/2014/12/05/tortoise-tracking/

Cape Leopard Trust. Retrieved from https://capeleopard.org.za/research/techniques/radio-telemetry

Kallok, M. (2015, September/October) Moose in Minnesota. Retrieved from https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/mcvmagazine/issues/2015/sep-oct/moose-in-minnesota.html

Migratory Connectivity Project. Retrieved from http://www.migratoryconnectivityproject.org/vhf-radios/

Palminteri, S. 2017, May 12. Location, location, location: Facts and FAQs about radio telemetry. Retrieved from https://news.mongabay.com/2017/05/195695_radio-telemetry/

Rappaport, N. 2016, March 9. National Geographic. Monarch Butterflies Get Tiny Radio Trackers. Retrieved from https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/expedition-raw/00000153-5c32-d742-a553-7dffb0f80000

Rappaport, N. 2016 April 21. Tagging Adorable, Nasty Little Penguins. Retrieved from https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/best-job-ever/00000154-3440-ded6-a3f4-feca0ebf0000

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services. 2011, March 4. Using Radio Telemetry to Track Nutria Movement. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUejil9ZyyE

Van Neste, Kristen. 2017, July 30. Radio Telemetry in Ten Minutes. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuTp4zkjsZE

Van Neste, Kristen. 2017, August 17. Top Radio Telemetry Tips in 5 Minutes. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG9XgFQ7wsk

Wildlife Act. 2014, April 17. GPS and VHF Tracking Collars used for Wildlife Monitoring. Retrieved from https://wildlifeact.com/blog/gps-and-vhf-tracking-collars-used-for-wildlife-monitoring/

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Easy to use, reliable and versatile

Cost is affordable

Able to cover large areas of habitat

Use on a wild variety of animals

Ability to use 24 hours a day

Abundance of data collection can be obtained

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The technology can detach from wildlife

Negative effect on wildlife growth

Battery has an eventual end life

Weight of technology could impact the wildlife in different ways

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Radio telemetry is one method used in animal tracking for conservation research. It was first used in the 1960s and continues to be a top choice techniques in tracking wildlife. It uses three parts; a transmitter, an antenna and a receiver. Photo credit: Krista Adamek

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Learn more about how radio telemetry is assisting in research of Moose populations in Minnesota. Photo credit