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Asked by chazzabeast to Claire, Joanna, Kapila, Renata, Suzanne on 21 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by planc002, 12rob01, 0lli3st3, knigl034, kimmie444, morgan1411, charlotte756, bakee050, littlemissemily, ashjt007, weste038, max1, ashleyjonesx, annab123, blytn006, maxgillson123, melissa13, 010jam35010, lg333, tomz2000, eloise123, anon-38114.
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Renata Medeiros answered on 21 Jun 2013:
This is to me THE most difficult question of all! Sometimes when you first find something it is hard to know how important it really is and usually only time will tell what were the most significant discoveries of our time. Plus, in my field of research, I am not ever going to find something like the cure for cancer or another planet in the sky so the things that to me could be great discoveries might not seem at all too impressive to most people. On top of that, it always feels a bit wrong to claim a discovery for myself because scientists ever hardly work alone.
Having said all this, I am very happy to have made two discoveries (together with other people). One was a new species of seabird. It is called Monteiro’s storm petrel and it is one of rarest birds in the world. It looks very much like another species of storm petrel so my research was to compare one with the other (their diets, their breeding habits, their calls, their genetics) to know for sure that they were different and that one of them was truly a new species.
My second discovery was that storm petrels can decide how much to eat based on how much food there is available. They eat less when there is more food and eat more when there is less food! Strange? Well, it is actually quite clever: why stuff yourself and carry more weight around when you know you can find food anytime? Better eat plenty and get some reserves when you’re not really sure how soon you can have another meal! I found this out by weighing different birds for many years, studying their diet and then seeing how their prey varied in those years.
Sorry for the long answer!! Congratulations if you got this far!
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Suzanne Harvey answered on 24 Jun 2013:
I agree with Renata, this is a tough question! My work is still going on, and so at the moment I don’t know what all of the results will be… I have until September to work on the data so ask me again then!
I think the most significant discoveries in my area are discovering that another species of primate can do something that we had thought was uniquely human. This helps us to understand out own evolution, so I find it amazing that our work can change the way we define what is human! An example of this from my current work is from infant baboon communication. While we are not entirely sure yet as we’re working on analysis, it looks like baby baboons can use tantrums to manipulate their mothers at a much younger age than humans. We had thought this was a human thing, and that it had to be learnt by seeing that if you scream your mother gives you sweets to stop you doing it… But if baboons do it too, not only is it not unique to us, but it would also probably happen whether we learnt to do it or not! It looks like we evolved to give our parents a hard time!
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Claire El Mouden answered on 26 Jun 2013:
Hiya,
Sometimes you know you’ve come up with something big the second you spot it. However more commonly, it is often hard to know what discoveries are going to be important when you first make them….often it is only after some time when people have thought about it that you realise how what you’ve found out, explains more things than you originally thought. Sorry that answer is so vague! So I think right now, I’m not sure which bits of my work will be the most significant – only time will tell. I guess the thing about my research I find really cool is realising how very like animals humans are in many ways. It’s actually far harder than you might think to define what it is about humans that makes us unique.
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