Question: Do you ever go to Madagascar to see the animals?

Sive Finlay answered on 13 Nov 2013:

Hi Jimmy,

I haven’t been to Madagascar yet but I’m trying to plan a trip at the moment so hopefully I’ll get to go next year. I want to work with an American scientist who’s based in Madagascar because he has lots of field sites already set up and he has experience with catching and working with tenrecs. I want to do some new experiments to look at tenrecs’ abilities to echolocate. There was some work done 50 years ago which showed that some species of tenrec produce sounds by clicking their tongues and use those sounds to find their way around, a bit like echolocation by bats and whales. I want to use more modern equipment to look at the call structures of echolocating tenrecs and also to test whether other species of tenrecs can also echolocate.
So far I’ve only seen tenrecs in zoos; one in Washington DC and one in Chicago but hopefully I’ll get to see them in the wild very soon!
Sive