It was in Indonesia that Agata Staniewicz glued herself to a crocodile.
Accidentally glued myself to a crocodile while attaching a radio transmitter. #fieldworkfail
— Agata Staniewicz (@AgataStaniewicz) July 30, 2015
Over the last few days, biologists, ecologists, and other scientists have been sharing mistakes and mishaps they’ve made in the wilderness: in other words, their #fieldworkfails. They are wonderful. I’ve posted some below, but I also emailed some of the participants to find out more about their misadventures.
“I glued my finger to the croc while attaching a transmitter with an instant glue,” Staniewicz, now a Ph.D. student at the University of Bristol, told me. “And then [I] spent a couple of minutes carefully detaching my finger from the croc and trying to keep the transmitter fastened while the local fishermen watched and laughed.”
Set padded leghold trap near house for jackal. Catch lion. #fieldworkfail
— Rosie Woodroffe (@RosieWoodroffe) July 31, 2015
Rosie Woodroffe, a senior researcher at the Zoological Society of London, said that she was not the one who discovered the lion: Her new student did instead.
“I had a new student, a vet-turned-ecologist who was just starting her Ph.D.,” she wrote to me in an email. “I thought it was time for my student to try handling the animals without me present—she was a qualified vet after all—so the team set some padded leghold traps in among the houses at our research centre in Kenya, hoping to catch some jackals.”