When Nature Calls: Cell Phones Ring Owls

MIT researchers are USING CELL PHONES TO COUNT OWLS. They've loaded 65 phones with recorded sounds of owl calls, lashed the phones to trees in a forest in Sri Lanka, and wired them up with amplified speakers. They dragooned volunteers from the Audubon Society in Maine to call the phones, then count the owls they hear responding over the phone. It's much cheaper than shipping 65 people to Sri Lanka, and can be scaled up to huge projects and other species.

(props to textually.org)