ICARUS Initiative

[3] One major hurdle to tracking the movements of birds and especially insects is creating a transmitter small enough to place on individual animals.

[10] The primary purpose of the ICARUS Initiative is to greatly expand available data on animal migrations for the sake of conservation, although a variety of other fields of study may be advanced by the project's information gathering.

Studying the movements of birds and insects may further scientists' understanding of how natural hazards and human interactions affect animal populations.

It has long been hypothesized that some birds and bats can predict earthquakes because of their ability to detect shifts in magnetic fields, but so far the only evidence to support this has been anecdotal.

[11] The project's migratory data may also provide greater insight into the propagation of animal-borne diseases like SARS, bird flu and West Nile virus.