A few years ago, I started following science journalist Sonia Shah, whose book "Pandemic" came out in 2016. She’d written "The Fever" in 2010 about Malaria, and I found her reporting and descriptions alarming but fascinating. Shah recently tweeted that at the time "Pandemic" came out, "most people read it as provocative science fiction." Count me as one of her readers who thought it was futuristic and that I’d have plenty of time to eventually ask her for an interview on how viruses spread, maybe when there was a particular news hook. You all know what happened next.
So when Shah’s latest book came out, "The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move" in 2020, I wanted to talk to her right away. My interview with her is in this week’s repeat of "The Mysteries of Migration." It turns out the way animals, humans, and even microbes and viruses migrate have elements in common.
If you want to read more of Shah’s work, last month she had an interactive piece in The New York Times Magazine, "Animal Planet," that shows how a new technological system will track animal species from outer space. The data collected is part of the ICARUS Project, the International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space. Again, sounds like science fiction, but this is expected to give us very real and entirely new insight into how thousands of animals move, which in turn will tell us more about habitats, changing ecologies, and how disease spreads. An example she gives is radio tracing orchid bees in Panama.
In Shah’s story, ICARUS founder and biologist Martin Wikelski, managing director of the Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany, calls it the "Internet of Animals."
I’m intrigued, and hoping that might be the subject of Shah’s next book.
–Shannon