• Question: Is it annoying when animals do something you don't expect?

    Asked by Katya to Carrie, Ellen, Rupert on 16 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Carrie Ijichi

      Carrie Ijichi answered on 16 Mar 2017:

      Sometimes it’s really funny and usually it’s really interesting! When I’m running an experiment or study and they do something unexpected it usually creates whole new questions I really want to answer and helps me come up with new projects to do.

    • Photo: Rupert Marshall

      Rupert Marshall answered on 16 Mar 2017:

      It is the unexpected that makes science so interesting and exciting. It makes you re-think your ideas and might help you come up with different explanations for what is going on. Animal behaviour scientists have ideas why and how animals do what they do based on what they already know. But they have to test them to make sure they are right. Being wrong just means the animals are doing what they do for a different reason, so we have to try and work it out. Being a scientist is like being in the police: we look for clues, we test out our ideas and we hope to find out the true story of life on planet earth. if we test our idea and find we’re wrong, we just go and look for more clues, have a think and try again. No crimes to solve, just fun facts to fit together like pieces of a puzzle which tell us the secrets of animal life.

    • Photo: Ellen Williams

      Ellen Williams answered on 16 Mar 2017:

      Oh no I love it when animals do things I am least expecting! I think the best discoveries are when things come at you as a bit of a side ball – it can be really hard to go into research with no expectations but it is actually really important to try and do that in order to make your experiment as non-biased as possible

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