Question: How long do you work on a project?

Becky Thomas answered on 20 Jun 2018:

Excellent question, but it varies loads! Some research can be done within a year – we come up with a question, collect data, then analyse it, and write it up, but other projects can take many years to complete. In some of my work with garden birds we can get it completed within a year, because we can design nice simple experiments, but when you’re working with animals like leopards it can take much longer. This is because animals like leopards are hard to study, they like to hide away from people, and they are solitary (they like to live alone), so you have to work over big areas to work with them. Some of my work with leopards took 3-4 years before we got any good results!!