SUPPLIED
Shaun Wilkinson, founder and principal scientist at Wilderlab in Wellington, demonstrating one of their testing kits in action.
When a Wilderlab scientist grabbed some testing kits and headed to Breaker Bay in the wake of a passing pod of orcas, the team was expecting to find whale DNA in the water samples she brought back.
What they didn’t expect, but found nonetheless, was the DNA of kangaroos.
Environmental DNA, or eDNA, is genetic material shed by organisms through the loss of skin, hair, scales, fluids, and faeces, which can be used to catalogue species found in a body of water.
It took Wilderlab founder and principal scientist Shaun Wilkinson and his colleagues a good couple of hours to discover the truth; the DNA was ending up in the water second-hand, a key ingredient in dog food sold at a nearby supermarket.
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