Wednesday, 2 November 2016

The heat is on....or is it?


The heat is on! 

This week sees our crowd funding project go live!

The reason we are one of 14 zoo projects around the world in the Zoo Challenge is that west coast USA crowd funder host Experiment spotted a recent paper published in Zoo Biology by a student and Centre and Zoo staff. They were impressed; they approached us to encourage our participation in the Zoo Challenge.

Our project The heat is on, or is it? Better heating for captive tortoises will find out how critically endangered Madagascan radiated tortoises Geochelone radiata in Newquay Zoo use the heat sources in their enclosure.



















Be part of this project by contributing to the project. Any amount will help us get to our total and the more people who contribute, the more chance we have of being selected to receive an extra $1000 direct from the crowd funder.


Some detail on the project. Thermal imaging cameras will be used to compare the effectiveness of different external heat sources in warming tortoises. The results will be widely disseminated in the zoo world through links with Durrell, ZSL and of course Newquay Zoo who will incorporate the information into development of their tortoise enclosure.

The project is a brilliant example of the collaborations involving the staff and students at the Centre for Applied Zoology at Cornwall College Newquay – uncovering information that has a direct, local and widespread application in zoology. We plan to use Centre equipment and staff expertise together with Zoo staff to collect and interpret the data. The crowd funding proposal was co-written by the team and the supporting video was produced by a recent BSc Applied Zoology and Wildlife Education & Media graduate.

So the heat is on! We have about a month to raise the project total. If you are unable to help by donating, please spread the information far and wide through your networks in case someone you know can.









(by Peter McGregor- Research Coordinator at Cornwall College Newquay )  

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