University of Idaho Ph.D. candidate Hallie Walker accidentally led her team into a lion’s den this summer.
“I picked up a signal (for an antelope I was tracking) really strongly — I knew he was within 100 meters, so I put my head down and started walking really fast and walked through a bush,” Walker said. “Everyone was behind me. I heard people stop and when I turned around, I saw a lioness crouched, locked in on me, about five meters away.”
The lioness snarled and left when Walker turned around — followed by her three cubs.
Walker is studying under assistant professor Ryan Long, and has studied large mammals in Africa since her time as an undergraduate at Brown University. She was interviewed last August on Freakonomics, a radio show based on the book by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt.
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Walker was featured with author Priya Parker, University of North Carolina professor Steven Rogelberg, anthropologists Helen Schwartzman and Jen Sandler and several listeners in an episode titled “How to Make Meetings Less Terrible.”
Dubner, that episode’s host, asked Walker about her undergraduate research on African Wild Dogs in Botswana. Walker had investigated how African Wild Dog populations use sneezing as a form of communication in rally events, when the dogs attempt to recruit other members of their pack to do something together. Dubner related this to how human decision making and dominance in meetings.
Walker had no idea how Freakonomics would incorporate her research into the episode until she listened to the radio show.
Now, Walker leads a study on spiral-horned Antelope in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique. She has spent the past two summers in Mozambique conducting research. Long said she will do this for two more summers.
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“(Walker)’s research is more basic science in nature,” Long said. “It’s more curiosity-driven and revolves around bigger picture questions about how ecosystems work and the role that large mammals play in those ecosystems. She’s sort of unique in the lab in that respect.”
Long said Walker’s research is at the cutting edge of study in her field. He said she uses approaches and technology at the forefront of large mammal ecology.
Walker said both research projects focused on behavioral ecology, or how individual animal behavior influences the broader community those animals live in. However, African Wild Dog research focused on how individuals act between packs while the spiral-horned antelope research focuses on larger scale changes.
In the future, Walker hopes to continue working with undergraduates and teaching field skills. She wants to continue researching how animals influence the environment they live in and other issues related to large scale ecology.
A transcript and audio recording of the radio show Walker was featured in are available on the Freakonomics website. Walker’s paper, “Sneeze to Leave: African Wild Dogs (Lycaon Pictus) Use Variable Quorum Thresholds Facilitated by Sneezes in Collective Decisions,” is available online on the National Center for Biotechnology Information website.
Lex Miller can be reached at [email protected]