Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years. Yacold also

partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for

gut health, an investigator-led research program. To learn more about Yachtold, visit yawcult.co.

com.j. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T dot-C-O-J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacult.

For Scientific American Science Quickly, this is Rachel Feltman.

You're listening to the second episode of our Friday Fascination miniseries, The New Conservationists.

Today we're heading into the field, under the sea and to the savannah,

with researchers who are using artificial intelligence to change the way we understand

and protect animals and their ecosystems.

Our guide once again is Ashley Papp, an animal scientist turned storyteller.

She's here to explain why we're turning to machine learning to process nature's complexity

and how it's extending the reach of what our eyes can see and our ears can hear.

After college, I spent time as a field researcher in Costa Rica working with endangered sea turtles.

It was a lot of hard work.

Basically, hours of walking up and down remote beaches hoping

to spot a turtle nesting in the sand. The fundamental idea behind field research rests on two questions.

How many animals are there, and where do they live? If we know the answers, we can learn a lot about a species, or in some cases, an entire ecosystem.

And even though they're simple questions in theory, answering them can be incredibly time-consuming and expensive.

The natural world is super complicated.

That's Matthew McCown. He started a company called Conservation Metrics,

which uses technology such as AI automation to decode nature.

...