Counting Acorns
Acorns! (1) Do a quick Google Images search for “wildlife biologist” and you’ll probably get the impression that scientists researching wild animals spend a significant amount of their time in the field, directly handling the creatures that they are studying — catching snakes, measuring the wings of songbirds, and keeping baby bears warm in their jackets while a radio collar is affixed to their mother. All of these activities are important in certain kinds of research, but the frequency of their depiction in news articles, government websites, and TV shows provides a somewhat skewed picture of what an “average” workday looks like for a wildlife professional. Academic biologists have classes to teach, grants to apply for, and papers to write and usually only spend a few weeks every year out in the field. Likewise, fulltime government biologists are kept busy answering questions from citizens, analyzing data, and writing reports; they get out in the field too, but a lot of the data colle