'Facebook for Animals' Tested On Wild Great Tits

This should be fun.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120618150519.htm
ScienceDaily (June 18, 2012) — A new way of analyzing the social networks that link individual animals to each other has been tested on wild great tits by Oxford University researchers.


A new way of analyzing the social networks that link individual animals to each other has been tested on wild great tits. (Credit: © Javier Castro / Fotolia)

How animals associate in groups can have important consequences in terms of the health and survival of both individuals and whole populations; influencing factors such as the spread of disease and the ability to find food or mates.

But revealing the networks underlying animal societies is a challenge when a large amount of fieldwork data consists of a long stream of automated observations of the times and locations of individuals, leaving scientists to try and reconstruct the 'big picture' of how individuals are connected.