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UC Professor Helps Track Jaguars

Jay Yocis/UC Creative Services
UC associate professor Brooke Crowley, left, works with her former student, UC graduate Maddie Greenwood, in Crowley's lab.

The University of Cincinnati is helping to track the notoriously secretive jaguar in the Central American country of Belize.

Jaguars are so elusive and difficult to follow that they are nicknamed "shadow cat." However, UC associate professor of geology and anthropology Brooke Crowley was able to analyze jaguar droppings shipped to her lab to assist in the effort.

The jaguar droppings were collected in the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve in Belize and, along with researchers from the American Museum of Natural History and the City University of New York, Crowley and her partners have found that jaguar scat provides isotopic signatures similar to those found in the undigested bones of prey to track the animal's movements.

Joining Cincinnati Edition to talk about the research and its purpose is UC Associate Professor of Biology and Anthropology Brooke Crowley.

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Michael Monks brings a broad range of experience to WVXU-FM as the host of Cincinnati Edition, Cincinnati Public Radio's weekday news and information talk show.