Deep in the forests of Florida’s Key Largo, an opossum is being used to find an animal that researchers rarely see coming. Fitted with a small tracking collar and released back into the wild, the marsupial goes about its normal movements through the undergrowth. The collar is programmed to notice when that movement suddenly stops. If the signal later starts travelling again, it can point scientists towards a Burmese python carrying the device inside its body. The technique turns an ordinary wildlife-tracking signal into an unexpected detection tool, allowing researchers to locate snakes that might otherwise remain hidden for weeks. The unusual method grew out of a mammal-tracking project rather than a plan to hunt snakes.
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