Dungineers

Project Description:

Wildlife is facing difficulties. Human-made threats like habitat loss, contamination and overhunting lead to species being endangered. In order to prevent extinction, zoos around the world try to make abiotic factors within their enclosures resemble those in nature as closely as possible. This helps the animals reproduce at a self-sustaining rate and ultimately repopulate endangered ecosystems.

Breeding certain species in captivity has proven to be a challenge in the past: The desert house of Nuremberg Zoo opened its doors in 2018, but until now the temperature, sun and moisture levels within the habitat could not be measured precisely enough to provide the necessary environment for dung beetles to reproduce in larger numbers.

We, as “Zoo-Dungineers”, propose to create a flexible & cheap system that aims to help Nuremberg zoo and other zoos provide the best conditions for the animals. Our solution focuses on delivering detailed environmental measures of the habitat that are easy to monitor by the zookeepers. At the same time, our system must not interfere with the animals’ habits and should be unnoticeable to the visitor.

Development Team: Janik Aurich, Rui Baeta, Julian Deyerler, Samuel Escobar, Md Shaiyan Haider, Nils Steinlein

Scrum Master: Martin Ullrich, Matthias Zürl

Partner: Tiergarten Nürnberg