• Question: What is the scariest thing that's happened to you in your science work?

    Asked by 282brna34 to Áine, Ciarán, Eoin, Lydia, Victoria on 17 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Lydia Bach

      Lydia Bach answered on 17 Nov 2014:

      Hey!

      I was once working in a Savannah in Bolivia. A scientist and myself were trying to catch birds at 6am in the darkness, when we came across a dead capybara. It was only just killed freshly!

      http://www.stlzoo.org/animals/abouttheanimals/mammals/rodents/capybara/

      So the Bolivian scientists said: there is a puma around. We had to take our machetes out and wait for a long time to be sure the puma was gone.
      I have never been so scared.

      – Later we installed cameras near the dead capybara and then could watch the puma come back feeding at night!

    • Photo: Ciarán O'Brien

      Ciarán O'Brien answered on 18 Nov 2014:

      Back when I was studying marine science, my class went on a field trip on the Celtic Voyager, one of Ireland’s research vessels. Anyway, the boat was rocking a lot from the waves, and I’m a big guy, and between those two problems I whacked my head off the top of one of the doors while climbing the stairs and split my head open! You could even see the bone, and there was so much blood pouring out of me I was a little bit terrified to be honest. But they had a talented first-aider handy who glued my head back together, and they were really good at making a person not panic.

      I had a splitting headache for weeks after, and I still have the scar underneath my hair. The good news is that after that, the crew put padding across all the door frames. I made everyone safer by nearly killing myself! \o/

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