Question: What was the longest experiment you have ever done and how long did it take?

Renata Medeiros answered on 19 Jun 2013:

Hello Danne! This is an hard question… my experiments tend to be in the field so they are not the type of experiments we’re probably used to. For instance, one of my experiments was to find out how the birds (storm petrels) respond to the calls of other individuals. I had to record the calls of some birds and then I would play the recordings at the entrance of each nest to see which birds called back, how loud were them and which type of call would they respond with. This took me about 8 months to do because I needed to wait for all the birds to be inside the nests, I wanted to experiment the males and the females and there is only one at the time in the nest, I also wanted to compare birds that already had eggs with those that still hadn’t… Altogether it takes time and patience. I found that males answer a lot more than females and they do get quite angry to hear another bird “calling” at the entrance of the nest. One of them once came out and tried to attack me! It was a surprise but they are tiny and harmless so no worries there.