Seals are wearing funny hats! Instead of decoration, it is actually helping humans draw Antarctic seascapes？

"Hee hee hee!"

"What are you laughing at!"

"What the hell are you wearing!"

"For drawing maps."

"brag!"

Unknown ocean

For mankind at this stage, it is not easy to explore the ocean in an all-round way, but it can only be said that it is whimsical. Humans rely on more and more advanced instruments, but these instruments can not completely resist the corrosion of seawater, and it is difficult to bear the rising pressure while diving, and the main reason is that the cost is too high! Although the performance of these instruments is remarkable, so far, only 23% of the seabed maps in the world have been drawn based on the data obtained by them. The Antarctic ocean, which is remote and covered with ice, is even more difficult to explore.

In order to break the ice and keep the technical cost low and the scientific quality high, an international team of scientists participating in an ocean project of Australian Antarctic Science Center of Excellence (ACEAS) thought of deep-diving seals such as Southern Elephant Seal and Weddell Seal. As we all know, the greater the ability, the greater the ability. They installed sensors with basic measuring tools on these seals to detect information such as temperature, salinity and depth, so as to better understand the mysteries of Antarctic waters.

This sensor looks like a funny little hat, which makes our leopard more lovely, but don’t be deceived by its dull appearance. Facts have proved that the tracker is a serious science and very effective. These studies just started this summer, but at present, some leopards have discovered an underground canyon as deep as 2 kilometers, which has never been marked by humans before. It was named Mi Long Jia-Nuina Canyon, after the seal who found it.

Navy seals

A total of 265 southern elephant seals and Weddell seals weighing between 300 and 600 kilograms have somehow joined the investigation corps. I don’t know if they have signed a contract, whether they have five insurances, one gold, double holidays and annual leave, but I don’t have them anyway, because I have just been laid off! Hee hee! (Kill me! )

For this experiment, some animal welfare organizations think that this operation of the team is true and anthropomorphic. Will this 550-gram sensor affect the daily life of seals? In this regard, the research team said: the sensor is fixed on the fur of each seal’s head. Every year, the seal’s head will change its hair, and then the sensor will fall off, which means that the seal is helping human beings without any pain. It sounds a bit uncomfortable, but when you think about it, it is really uncomfortable.

When a "big torpedo" carrying a sensor enters the water, the equipment will record the depth every 4 seconds and measure the temperature and conductivity simultaneously, which can help scientists better understand the continental shelf of the East Antarctic and the ocean processes affected by climate change.

Seals gave full play to their subjective initiative to start their daily lives, so soon the team got more than 500 thousand data of seals diving on the continental shelf of the East Pole. The team compared it with the sounding information of the same place obtained by humans themselves before. The mismatch between seal data and previous sounding information can help scientists find more different depths and features in different ocean areas.

Through the error correction of the Leopard Investigation Corps, the team found that in some areas, the previous estimation of ocean depth by humans was more than 25% wrong! After all, they can easily dive into more than 1500 meters of water and all kinds of hidden maps that humans can’t enter.

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Perhaps it is afraid of turning the seals into the Mediterranean Sea. The team does not rely entirely on the seals. The diving robots such as Boaty McBoatface and Icefin, which look fat and young, also undertake similar tasks.

The different data sets obtained by different means enable the team to understand the seabed areas that are difficult to explore.

Professor McMahon, the main leader of the research team, explained: "The observation results we collected from seals help us to better understand the shape of the seabed, especially in the passage area where warm water enters the ice overhead cavity. This knowledge is also crucial for scientists trying to measure the melting rate of ice sheets. "

The structure of the seabed? How do all kinds of marine natives cross the ocean? There are a lot of scientific data gaps in these problems. This is because researchers always approach this task from a human perspective.

Now, let the animals help us, explore the ocean from their own perspective, look at it from the other side, and immediately let human beings poke their asses like a rolling pin-open their eyes.