Citizen science projects enable the general public to contribute meaningfully to science by helping us cope with ever-increasing quantities of data. Ideally, we would like to automate data processing entirely but sometimes data is just too noisy, as is the case with the millions of audio recordings captured by the [iBats](http://www.technologyfornature.org/project/ibats/) project. In the hunt for bats, [Bat Detective](http://www.batdetective.org/) (part of the [Zooniverse](https://www.zooniverse.org/) family of citizen science projects) is asking volunteers to analyse acoustic recordings by looking and listening to the sounds recorded across Eurasia. As well as finding out what the iBats recordings contain, we are hoping to develop an automated procedure for analysing similar data, learning from the Bat Detective volunteers’ example.
Links
http://www.batdetective.org/
http://www.batdetective.org/#!/about/team
http://blog.batdetective.org/
https://twitter.com/batdetect
Media
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19803167
http://www.scientificamerican.com/citizen-science/project.cfm?id=zooniverse-bat-detective
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/audio/2012/nov/05/science-weekly-podcast-never-trust-facts
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01n1rpr
Visualisation of a bat `feeding buzz', from the Bat Detective website
Project lead institution:
