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University of Brighton
Cat and badger in a garden

Share your Springtails story with us

Many people support wildlife in their gardens by providing food for them. However, have you ever wondered what the impact of providing food has on the interactions between wildlife in your garden?

Submissions closed

This project has now finished. Thanks to everyone who has taken part!

Find out more about research into monitoring urban wildlife in the UK.

Your #Springtails stories

Here are some of the great stories and images that have already been uploaded so far.

View all photos on Flickr

View all videos on YouTube

 

 

About the project

Food in gardens

Many people support garden mammals, such as hedgehogs, foxes and badgers, by providing extra food for them. However, it is not always known what animals actually end up eating this food or if the animals compete to get access to it. Foxes and hedgehogs have been seen to feed from the same bowl but we have also witnessed a fox nipping a badger's behind to try to keep it from food.

The study

We are interested in studying the interactions between foxes, hedgehogs, badgers, cats and dogs, in the presence or absence of extra food. The project will be focused on interactions between foxes, badgers and hedgehogs, but we are also interested in interactions between the same species, i.e. fox and another fox, and also between pets.

How to help

Please help us to find out how extra food provided in gardens may influence the interactions between garden mammals by sharing with us any interactions you have seen or recorded between the mammals in your garden. You can do this by uploading videos, photos or descriptions of what you have seen and answer a few anonymous questions about if you provide food in your garden or not. This will help us understand how feeding might be affecting interactions between garden mammals.

Whether you provide food in your garden or not, we are keen for us to share the tales from your garden!

This research is led by mammalian biologist Dr Dawn Scott.

 

 

How the data will be used

Researchers trained in behaviour analysis will look at your video/images and story and will analyse the interaction between the animals.

Videos and photos which have interesting examples of interactions may be shared using social media and/or used in association with BBC Springwatch and Unsprung broadcasts.

Researchers will add individual analysis to a single database to allow a summary and further analysis of the types and extent of interactions between different garden mammals.

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